


A Slight Miscalculation

by skepwith



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Bear is a hellhound, Finch is a literal computer wizard, French pastry, Incubus!Reese, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Sex Magic, allusions to previous abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-02 00:02:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8643316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skepwith/pseuds/skepwith
Summary: Reese is an incubus that Finch summons by mistake.
The wizard isn’t at all what John expected. He’s slight, with a beakish nose, pale eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, and receding hair that stands up straight like it’s surprised. In his brown three-piece suit, he looks like a teacher at an old-fashioned boys’ school. But it isn’t his nebbishy appearance that throws John—it’s his expression. Most summoners greet him with a leer or a blush; this man looks, well, baffled.





	1. Chapter 1

The wizard isn’t at all what John expected. He’s slight, with a beakish nose, pale eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, and receding hair that stands up straight like it’s surprised. In his brown three-piece suit, he looks like a teacher at an old-fashioned boys’ school. But it isn’t his nebbishy appearance that throws John—it’s his expression. Most summoners greet him with a leer or a blush; this man looks, well, baffled. His eyes skitter up and down John’s naked frame like they’re afraid to land on something alarming, and his mouth opens and closes without making a sound.  
  
There’s a power cord lying in a circle around John’s feet. It’s hooked up to a computer, and he can feel the spell humming through it. He sneakily prods at the barrier with his magic, but it holds firm. Cocking his head at the wizard, he lets a hint of a smile play on his lips. “How about you let me out of here so we can both have some fun?” he drawls.  
  
The small man gapes at him, eyes widening. “You— You’re an incubus!”  
  
John’s eyebrows lift. He didn’t really expect his opening gambit to work, but this is not the reaction he’s used to. “Yes?”  
  
The man darts to a computer and begins clicking away at the keyboard, his face bunched into a frown. Spell code scrolls rapidly down the screen, too complex for John to make sense of. After a moment, the wizard turns his frown on John, swivelling his torso as he looks at him and then back at the screen. “There appears,” he says, “to have been a slight miscalculation.” His voice implies the very idea offends him.  
  
John has seen “oops did I summon a sex demon?” posturing before, but this man’s reaction seems real. He shifts his weight inside the circle, reconsidering his approach. The room in which he’s materialized is cavernous and dimly lit, with rows of bookshelves. It looks like a library, but there are no signs of recent use. A collection of computers spreads across several desks, an island of technology in a sea of books. It’s surrounded by several rolling boards almost completely papered over with photos, clippings, and printouts. The computer fans hum and the sharp smell of magic hangs in the air.  
  
The wizard rises from his computer and limps back to the circle. “I am sorry,” he says, lifting his chin to look John in the eye, “but this spell was intended for another sort of person entirely.”  
  
_Person_ , John notes, not _demon_. A liberal, then. Probably voted for Obama. Is he still president? John needs to find a calendar. Feeling his way to a strategy, he says, “I’m pretty versatile. Just tell me what you’re looking for.”  
  
The man shakes his head, a sharp, stiff-necked movement. An injury, John guesses—one suffered later in life, judging by the awkwardness of the movement. “It’s a very dangerous job,” says Three-Piece Suit. “I couldn’t possibly subject anyone to it who wasn’t fully prepared for the sort of danger it entails. I do apologize for bringing you all this way in error—”  
  
“Please,” says John softly (he’s chosen his angle). “Give me a chance. Just a week, a day. Don’t send me back. You don’t know what it’s like.”  
  
The man quirks an eyebrow. “Pitchforks and lakes of fire?” he asks dryly.  
  
So the guy’s done his research. Without missing a beat, John says, “Worse—boredom.”  
  
It’s true. He’d gladly take the sharp pains of this world over the numbness of the other. He lets his feelings show in his face, and the wizard seems to soften in spite of himself, as John guessed he would. “I’ve done dangerous work before,” John says. “I know how to handle myself.” As a clincher, he adds, “Just a trial. You can always send me back if it doesn’t work.”  
  
Three-Piece Suit frowns, but John can tell he’s weakening. “What’s your name?” he asks.  
  
John raises his eyebrows. Does the guy really think he’s that easy?  
  
The wizard makes an impatient noise. “Not your real one, of course. I mean what should I call you?”  
  
“John Reese.” It’s what he used during his last stint on this side, and as good a name as any.  
  
“You may call me Mr. Finch.” Resuming his place at the keyboard, he says, “I’ll need to make a few modifications to my contract, given the…unforeseen circumstances.” He purses his lips at John. “I’m still not convinced this is a good idea.”  
  
Sooner than John expects, the wizard rises from his seat and holds out a mobile device, his fingers just skirting the invisible barrier of the confinement spell. John takes the phone with an ironic nod and scrolls through the document on the screen.  
  
It’s a standard contract, tightly written, with no loopholes John can see—more evidence this Mr. Finch knows what he’s doing. John scrolls through the legalese: _…the Summoned is not to kill a human unless said human threatens the life of an innocent party or attempts to inflict grievous bodily harm or unbearable pain upon the Summoned…_ The “unbearable pain” part is interesting, but not really useful; demons can bear a lot of pain. Surprisingly, there’s no clause ensuring automatic obedience to the Summoner, which might give him some wiggle room. Was Finch careless there or just overly idealistic? John’s betting on the latter. The contract’s duration is unlimited—which means, practically speaking, until John is sent back to the other side—but it can be ended by the Summoner at any time. All standard stuff.  
  
It isn’t what he hoped for, but he’ll figure something out; no contract is perfect. He scrapes a thumb against one of his sharp incisors until the skin splits, and presses a bloody print onto the phone’s screen. It gleams on the surface for a moment, then sinks into the display. There’s a beep as his agreement registers, and he feels a momentary pressure everywhere across his skin as the contract takes hold. A second later it’s gone, but he has no doubt he’ll feel it right away if he comes anywhere close to breaking the terms.  
  
He tosses the phone back to Finch, who catches it clumsily. After glancing at its screen, the wizard types a few strokes into his keyboard and the confinement spell releases. John feels the change in the air as the circle goes back to being an ordinary power cord. He steps over it, the linoleum floor cold under his feet.  
  
“I acquired some clothes for you,” Finch says, bustling around his makeshift office. “I had no idea what size to buy, so the fit will probably leave something to be desired, but they should do as a temporary measure.” He holds out a folded navy tracksuit and a pair of flip-flops, which John takes with an automatic “Thanks.” He lets his hand glance against Finch’s fingers; at the same time, his power uncoils and sends out a quiet tendril, seeking something to latch onto.  
  
A solid wall of magic immediately slams down between them. Finch arches his eyebrows as though to say _Really?_  
  
“Sorry,” says John lightly. “Force of habit.”  
  
The other man eyes him, lips pursed. “Yes, well, do please try to restrain yourself in future.”  
  
John gives him his meekest look. Finch is clearly more powerful than his run-of-the-mill aura implies. It’ll be fun finding his weak spot and wrapping him around John’s finger.    
  
The track suit is not a good look. John’s wrists and ankles stick out about six inches, and the jacket strains across his shoulders. His toes curl over the front of the flip-flops. “Not sure even I can make this work, Finch,” he says.  
  
The wizard winces away from his sartorial inelegance. “As I said, it’s just a stopgap. Here, use this to buy yourself a suitable wardrobe.” He holds out a credit card. The name stamped on it is Harold Finch. _Harold_ , John thinks. It seems fitting.  
  
“If anyone asks,” Finch continues, “I would suggest saying there was a fire in your building and all your belongings were smoke-damaged. Alternatively, you could blame a vindictive ex-girlfriend. I’ll leave the choice up to you.”  
  
“Thank you, Harold,” he says blandly. Holding up the card between two fingers, he asks, “What’s the credit limit?”  
  
“Ample,” says Finch, and turns back to his computers.  
  
Several hours later, John returns with an armload of shopping bags and two coffees. Finch glances up from his computer when he walks in, and for a second John tastes his arousal on the air: a mix of honey and ginger with a hint of lemon. John took the time—and money, since Finch seemed so blasé about it—to get a fresh shave and a haircut while his suits were being adjusted, knowing his appearance is one of the strongest weapons in his arsenal. He’s glad to see the effect isn’t lost on the wizard.  
  
John sets a coffee on the desk, leaning slightly closer than is strictly necessary, but Finch seems more concerned with moving the cup a safe distance from the keyboard. John gives a mental shrug and dumps his shopping on a chair.  
  
“No tie?” asks Finch, slanting a look up at him through his glasses. Again, honeyed ginger blooms across John’s tongue.  
  
“I don’t like things around my neck,” he says shortly. The fabric of his expensive shirt is soft, but it still feels startling against his skin. Embodiment takes a while to get used to. It’s strange to think how normal it became last time, by the end. He’d had other things to worry about.  
  
“I’ve finished constructing your identity,” says Finch, picking up a wallet from the desk. The wallet is black and supple and smells of new leather. Inside is a New York driver’s license with his picture in the name of John Rollins, an ID card from a company called Eagle Security, several credit cards, a public library card, a Metrocard, and a half-filled punch card from a frozen yogurt chain. John entertains himself momentarily trying to imagine his summoner buying half-a-dozen frozen yogurts. “That was quick,” he says.  
  
Finch arches an eyebrow. “I’m very good at what I do, Mr. Reese.”  
  
“It won’t fool everyone. What about people who can see what I am? They’ll be looking for a demon registration number.”  
  
“I’ve taken care of that,” says Finch, rolling his chair to another desk. Picking up a pair of tweezers, he extracts a tiny computer chip from its protective case and holds it up to show John. “This will project a registration number for anyone who looks at you with magically enhanced sight.”  
  
John tries not to look as skeptical as he feels. “Those are hard to fake.”  
  
“Oh, it’s perfectly real,” says Finch as he slots the chip into something that looks like a cross between a staple gun and a torture device. “You’re in the national database as H-642713-Q, a Level Three demon working security for an insurance firm. You’ve passed all the necessary background checks and have all the usual clearances.”  
  
Finch must have somehow hacked the NSA database. John’s impressed. “Does that include a gun permit?”  
  
Finch glances up, frowning. “Yes. Though I’d prefer if you didn’t use it.”  
  
“Well, that all depends on what I’m up against. My demonic wiles work best at close range. They’re not so great in a firefight.”  
  
Finch sighs. “Very well. I’ll leave it to your discretion.” He adjusts the staple gun and stands stiffly. “I’ll need to…chip you.”  
  
“Right.” John bends his head forward, and cool air stirs the hairs on his neck. Footsteps shuffle unevenly behind him.  
  
“I can’t reach—you’re too tall,” says Finch, sounding exasperated. “You’ll have to sit down.”  
  
John sits in Finch’s computer chair, which is still warm. He cants his head forward, feeling the back of his collar pull away from his nape. A tentative touch—Finch’s fingers. A gust of breath as Finch leans over him. A hint of sweet ginger—evidently Finch has a thing for his neck. Good to know. The fingers pinch a fold of skin, not too hard. There’s a press of metal, a loud thunk, and a prick of pain.  
  
“There,” exhales Finch, stepping back. John runs a hand across his nape. The chip’s so small he can barely feel it under his skin. He spins the chair around, ready to give Finch back his seat.  
  
The wizard is standing there staring at him, eyes unfocused. It takes John a moment to realize he’s reading the false registration. Finch nods, satisfied, and says, “That will do nicely.”  
  
Resisting the urge to touch his neck, John stands and picks up his coffee. When he takes a swig, the taste is almost overwhelming—he forgot how intense flavours can be. Finch’s cup is still sitting on his desk, untouched.  
  
“So,” says John, settling himself into the room’s only couch, a scratchy brown thing that he’s willing to bet Finch has spent the night on more than once. “Now that I’m properly tagged, maybe it’s time you told me what exactly you want me to do.”  
  
Finch pushes his chair slowly away from his keyboard. “Yes…” he says, staring at his hands, apparently choosing his words. At last he looks up and says, “I receive certain information—names.” He indicates the boards of photos and clippings with a tilt of his head. “Some of them require protection; some pose a danger to others. I need someone who is able to act in a physical capacity that is, alas, beyond me,” he says, gesturing at his injury with a wry twist to his mouth. “But discretion is essential. There are people who would not be pleased to discover my access to this information. Powerful people, who have proven themselves willing to protect their secrets by any means necessary.” He glances away, his face shuttering. Guilt, maybe?  
  
John’s done worse jobs. Nobody summons a demon unless they want it to do their dirty work, one way or another. “Okay,” he says. “Who’s first?”  
  
“Maria Jones.” Finch limps to an empty glass board and tapes up a photo of a woman in her mid-forties wearing a discount suit and a serious expression. “For the past twenty years she’s worked as an administrator with the transit authority. Divorced. Amicably, by all appearances. A daughter in high school with straight A’s. No debts to speak of. No enemies as far as I can tell. Not much to go on, I’m afraid.”  
  
Leaning back into a scratchy cushion, John says, “Should be easy enough. Bump into her after work, go for coffee, let things move on from there. I can have a look around her apartment after she falls asleep.”  
  
“You intend to seduce her?” Finch says, aghast.  
  
“Of course,” says John with a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s the quickest way to get the intel, and then I’ll be on hand to save her or stop her, whichever it turns out to be.” He takes another sip of coffee and enjoys the bracing bitterness on his tongue.  
  
“I don’t approve of coercing people, Mr. Reese, by magical means or otherwise,” says Finch sharply.  
  
John raises an eyebrow. “Who said anything about magic?” He’s a little offended, to be honest, though he keeps his expression blank.  
  
“Oh. I see.” Finch blinks. Then he shakes his head. “It would still be dishonest. No, Mr. Reese, I insist we find another way.”  
  
“You’re the boss,” says John. “Surveillance it is.” If Finch wants to do it the hard way, so be it. “How will I get in touch with you?”  
  
It turns out Finch has an earwig. He pulls it out of a plastic tube and it wriggles on the end of his tweezers. “Once it’s crawled into your ear, it will implant its payload into the cartilage—”  
  
“I’m familiar with the model.” The government uses something similar for special ops. The insects are magically bred to implant a voice-resonance spell then die and drop harmlessly out of the ear. _Did Finch steal military-grade tech or did he make it himself?_ John wonders as the wizard leans over him with his tweezers, bracing himself with a hand on John’s shoulder. Tiny feet tickle his ear, and a moment later he feels the slight buzz of a spell taking hold.  
  
Either Finch has improved on the model or his spells are better than the government’s, because his voice comes through crisply, with no fuzz or distortion. He explains how to activate it, demonstrating with a narrow fingertip on his own pale, smooth-shaven jaw.  
  
“How will _you_ hear _me_?” asks John.  
  
“I’ll always be able to hear you, Mr. Reese. I’ve made certain of that.”  
  
“Always? What if I want some private time?” His tone is just bland enough to be suggestive.  
  
Sadly, Finch doesn’t ruffle; John had been hoping for a voyeurism kink. “A running shower or faucet will generally provide a degree of interference, if that helps,” Finch says calmly. “But I’m afraid privacy is something you’ll have to earn.”  
  
Leaning his elbow on the couch arm, John props his chin on his fist and looks up winsomely through his lashes. “Gee, Harold, it’s like you don’t trust me.”  
  
“I’ve known you for all of five hours, Mr. Reese. And if you’ll forgive the generalization, your species of demon has a reputation for manipulating people,” says Finch primly, retreating to his computer chair.  
  
John tries to hide a smile. He doesn’t try very hard. “How about if I promise I won’t try to seduce you?”  
  
Finch arches an eyebrow at him. “Then I’ll assume you’re lying.”  
  
To his own surprise, John laughs. It comes out a bit rusty, but it feels good. Finch turns back to his screens, mouth pursed, but John catches a glint in his eye that suggests there might be a sense of humour lurking somewhere under that three-piece suit. 


	2. Chapter 2

While Finch keeps an eye on Maria Jones at work through a disturbingly impressive array of video surveillance, John searches her apartment methodically and thoroughly. He finds nothing of interest, though he does take a second to rub the worn terrycloth of her bathrobe against his face, just to remember what it feels like. Before leaving, he turns on her computer and copies its contents onto a USB drive.  
  
She leaves the MTA offices at lunchtime, and John follows her to a cafe. Standing behind her in line, he pulls out the mobile spell device Finch gave him and uses it to clone her phone. Finch’s magic doodad is efficient (of course), but even so, it hasn’t quite finished when she turns to leave, clutching a to-go coffee and a plastic-wrapped sandwich. John shuffles one way and then the other, saying, “Excuse me, sorry” as they perform the awkward little dance of two people trying to get out of each other’s way. He shoots her a sheepishly apologetic smile, careful to keep his lips closed so he doesn’t flash his slightly-too-sharp canines.  
  
As she meets his eyes, her skin flushes darker and a hint of anise skates across his palate. The device beeps, finished, and he steps aside so she can leave. She looks back twice before reaching the door. He can still taste her arousal, and it makes him realize how hungry he is.  
  
“Well done,” says Finch in his ear. Under his voice, some lady is yodelling her lungs out.  
  
“What’s that racket, Finch?”  
  
“I suppose you mean the music. It’s Maria Callas. _La Traviata_.”  
  
“That’s a relief. I though maybe you were strangling cats in your spare time.” He can practically hear Finch’s moue of disapproval, and it makes him grin.  
  
“Your musical education is sadly lacking, Mr. Reese,” says Finch with a sniff.  
  
“Maybe you should educate me, Harold,” he says, blandly insinuating.  
  
He’s pretty sure Finch rolls his eyes. “Do please try to concentrate on the job at hand.”  
  
John doesn’t hide the smile in his voice as he answers, “Whatever you say, Finch.”  
  
Back at Library HQ, Finch is cooly tapping away at his computer, absorbed in whatever esoteric spell he’s constructing. John hands over the drive with the subject’s files, and Finch plugs it in at once, his eyes flicking across the screen as it fills with text. “Thank you, Mr. Reese,” he says without looking up. “Keep an eye on Ms. Jones to make sure she gets home safely, then I’d like you to go to this location.” He hands him a key and a piece of paper with an address in the Upper East Side printed in neat capitals. “That will be all.”  
  
John accepts the dismissal without a word and spends the rest of the day watching Maria Jones. It’s uneventful, to say the least, but he occupies himself with re-acclimating to the sounds and smells of New York. The sun’s out, but there’s a cool wind across his cheeks—he’ll need to get himself a coat soon with one of Finch’s bottomless credit cards. It’s late September, according to a free weekly he picks up. That means fall: cold weather, lengthening nights, falling leaves. He suddenly remembers a sea of trees in fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. He’d like to see that again.  
  
He leaves Maria safe at home with her daughter, microwaving dinner, and heads over to the address Finch gave him. It’s an apartment near the top floor of a grey stone building. He walks down a quiet, thickly carpeted hall, watched by discreetly placed security cameras. The place sounds empty as he unlocks the door.  
  
He walks into an airy loft with big windows and acres of space. It’s tastefully, if blandly, furnished, but without personal touches, like a safe house or a hotel. “Whose place is this?” he wonders aloud.  
  
Finch is immediately in his ear, as if he’s never left. “Yours. See you tomorrow, Mr. Reese.”  
  
For nearly a minute, he stands there trying to work out the catch. How did Finch even manage to rent this place? No, of course: he probably owns the building. _You don’t need to buy my loyalty, Finch_ , he thinks. _The contract guarantees it_. Maybe this is part of Finch’s overblown sense of ethics. Or maybe he really doesn’t care about money. John shakes his head, wishing he had a better handle on the man.  
  
His new wardrobe has already been put away in the closet and chest of drawers. He changes into sweats and goes for a jog, reacquainting himself with what it feels like to push his lungs and his muscles. He relishes the discomfort: _This is what it feels like to have a body_. He even relishes the smell of exhaust and the honking horns. When he gets back to what he still can’t quite think of as his place, he fixes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and eats it in three bites. It tastes just as good as he remembers, so he fixes another one and eats that too. As satisfying as it is, it doesn’t do anything for that other hunger.  
  
He takes a shower and goes out hunting.

***

The next morning he arrives at the library carrying two bagels, an Americano, and a cup of green tea, which he bought based on the tin covered in Japanese characters that he noticed sitting next to the electric kettle in the library’s tiny kitchen.  
  
A few hours ago, he awoke in his new place, disoriented, and blinked at tall windows bleached grey with ambient city light, the _shush-shush_ of traffic in his ears and smooth sheets slipping against his skin, making his hairs prickle. After he rose and scraped off the night’s stubble, the old routines came back to him: jog, shower, breakfast, newspaper. The paper’s ink rubbed off on his fingers, and he remembered that too. “Nice to see not everyone’s getting it online these days,” said his neighbour, and John nodded at the old woman and smiled with his mouth closed, just like an ordinary neighbourly human.  
  
At the library, he climbs the stairs with his coffee cups and paper bag, stepping over scattered books. Finch is already there, asleep at his desk.  
  
“ ’Morning,” says John, and Finch jerks awake, then winces and straightens his glasses. A smattering of red-gold stubble gleams on his narrow jaw. His hair looks more startled than ever, but his shirt and vest are strangely unrumpled. Some kind of anti-wrinkle spell, maybe. How does anyone manage to sleep in a tie?  
  
Finch takes the tea gratefully but puts it down after one sip. “I think I may have figured out the threat to Ms. Jones,” he says. “But first, if you’ll excuse me.” He pushes himself up from the desk, his body moving even more stiffly than usual, and hobbles towards the bathroom. The sound of running water is followed by the buzz of an electric razor.  
  
John is sitting on the couch, enjoying his coffee, when Finch re-emerges wearing a new shirt and smelling of aftershave. He’s fiddling with a cufflink, and John would offer to help if he weren’t pretty sure he’d be rebuffed. Instead he says, “Maria Jones?”  
  
“Yes.” Finch finishes fixing his cuff and lifts his suit jacket off the back of a chair. As he puts it on awkwardly, John imagines holding it for him, smoothing it across his shoulders. Would Finch thank him, or be annoyed? Probably both.  
  
“I had a look through Ms. Jones’s computer files,” says Finch, sitting down and tapping rapidly at his keyboard. “I found a series of emails to her superior at the MTA, Peter Donaldson, in which she calls attention to numerous public complaints of excessive force by certain members of the transit police. It’s all carefully documented—security camera footage, hospital photos.”  
  
John gets up and looks at the screen over Finch’s shoulder. If Finch is conscious of his nearness, he shows no sign of it. “What’s more surprising, perhaps, is that Mr. Donaldson has hardly responded at all, beyond saying he’ll look into it. On a hunch, I did a little digging into his background, and I discovered that the transit officer who’s provoked the most complaints—a David Copeland—happens to be Donaldson’s son-in-law.”  
  
John straightens. “Well spotted, Finch.”  
  
“I like to be thorough,” he says with a kind of fussy satisfaction.  
  
“So you think Donaldson and/or Copeland might do something to shut her up?”  
  
“It seems likely. I’ve been keeping an eye on intra-office communications. So far, there’s been nothing pertinent.”  
  
“Hm,” says John, digging a bagel out of the bag and taking a bite. Poppyseed—he likes the way they crunch between his teeth. Finch looks up and seems momentarily fascinated, watching him eat. “There’s one for you, too,” John tells him around a mouthful of bagel.  
  
“Oh…thank you. No, it’s not that. It’s just…I wasn’t sure you ate.”  
  
John swallows and raises both eyebrows. “This body is just like any other, Finch. It has all the usual requirements.”  
  
“Of course,” Finch says immediately, cheeks faintly pink. “I didn’t mean…” He gestures with one hand, as if to brush away his previous comments. “I realize it’s not your true form.”  
  
John’s brows pinch together. “It’s as true a form as any other. When I’m here, this is who I am.”  
  
“And when you’re not here?”  
  
The bagel compresses under his fingers; when he lets go it bounces back immediately in true New York style. “The other side is…different.” He scans the library’s coffered ceiling, trying to find words to describe the indescribable. “I have a form there, but it’s not so…defined. Everything is less immediate, less sharp. You don’t really feel things.”  
  
“That sounds rather nice,” says Finch a little wistfully.  
  
John’s lips press together. “There’s a difference between not feeling pain and not feeling anything,” he says. “I’d take pain any day.”  
  
“Yes...” says Finch slowly, “I suppose I can see what you mean.”  
  
It occurs to John belatedly that Finch’s injury might hurt him. “Can’t you…you know? With your magic?” he asks.  
  
“What, fix myself?” Finch arches an eyebrow at him. “What makes you think I haven’t, Mr. Reese?”  
  
“Oh.” John stuffs more bagel in his mouth so he doesn’t say anything else stupid.  
  
Finch turns back to his screens. “When I first woke in the hospital, after the accident, I was unable to move at all below the neck.” His voice has a forced casualness, like someone attempting small talk with no idea what it’s supposed to sound like. “My current range of movement is the result of a great deal of time and effort, both physical and magical. I’m quite lucky, considering. Although it’s sometimes difficult to remember that.”  
  
Thankfully, at that moment Maria’s cell phone rings, and they both snap into business mode. It’s Donaldson. He asks her to meet him at a nearby bar after work, to talk about “the thing you’ve been emailing me about.” He adds in an undertone, “It’s probably better if we don’t discuss it here, given the, ah, sensitivity and so on.” Maria agrees, and he says, “Good, good. Have you told anyone else about this?”  
  
There’s a red flag if ever John’s heard one. He and Finch exchange a look.  
  
“No,” says Maria, “I thought it was best to go through the appropriate channels.”  
  
After she hangs up, Finch says, “You’d better stick close to her, Mr. Reese.”  
  
Sure enough, that evening as John is following Maria after work, a guy in a ski mask lunges out of the shadows, grabs her, and drags her into the alley behind a bar. John hurdles a bike rack and sprints after them.  
  
When he gets there, Ski Mask has an arm around Maria’s throat and a gun pressed to her temple. She’s pawing uselessly at his arm, her sensible heels scraping against the pavement. John steps into the light shed by the single bulb over the bar’s back door, and Ski Mask looks up, startled. The gun jerks away from Maria to point at John. Good.  
  
John keeps walking towards them. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says quietly. Ski Mask’s muffled breath is loud. Something pops, and John feels a familiar punch to his side. Ignoring it, he reaches forward and easily twists the gun out of Ski Mask’s hand, then drives the heel of his palm into the man’s jaw.  
  
Ski Mask staggers, releasing Maria. She sags to her knees, gasping. John seizes the guy’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around the bare skin between his glove and jacket cuff. The man goes slack, swaying on the spot. John eases him down onto some clinking garbage bags, never losing contact. Behind the mask holes, his eyes turn glassy. After a moment, he shudders, groans, and lies still.  
  
“Mr. Reese? Mr. Reese, are you all right?” says Finch in his ear.  
  
“I’m fine,” John rasps. He notices he’s still holding the gun, and lays it on the pavement. “You okay?” he asks Maria. She nods automatically from where she’s kneeling. Shock. He’s about to borrow her phone to call 911 when a siren bloops to life right at the mouth of the alley. Someone’s already called it in, and—just his luck—there was a police car nearby.


	3. Chapter 3

The police station smells like sour coffee and industrial cleaner. A detective named Carter takes his statement as he sits in a metal chair next to her desk. Her face is kind and tough in equal measure; he guesses she’s good at getting people to trust her. “What exactly happened between you and Mr. Copeland back there?” she asks him almost casually, like they’re two friends shooting the breeze.  
  
She’s talking about Ski Mask, who turned out to be the transit cop with the overzealous work ethic, probably put up to it by his father-in-law. John shrugs, careful to keep the blood on his shirt hidden by his suit jacket. “We just had a little conversation, detective.”  
  
“Oh, really? Because, you know, when he sobers up he’s gonna tell us his version, so now would be a good time to make sure you didn’t leave out any important details.”  
  
John’s pretty confident Copeland won’t tell the police—or anyone else—that a six-foot man made him come in his pants and pass out in an alley, so he just smiles blandly and sips his plastic cup of water. Carter offered him coffee, but he declined, assuming it tasted as bad as it smelled. He never used to be this picky. Finch must be rubbing off on him.  
  
Carter pretends to read over his statement, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “And you never met Maria Jones before tonight?”  
  
“No, like I said. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.”  
  
“Uh huh.” Her eyes rake him up and down. “You know, I never woulda pegged you for a Level Three. You seem a little more…impressive.”  
  
John doesn’t let his face react, though he knows that in itself is a tell. He left that little bit of information out of his statement. It doesn’t take a lot of magic to read his phony registration, but he thinks she’s probably pretty powerful—she’d have to be, as a Black female detective in the NYPD. He’d love to feed on her, but he’d probably give away too much in the process; he’s guessing she doesn’t miss much. “I’m flattered, detective,” he says.  
  
“Hm.” She pushes his statement across her desk. “Read it over to make sure it’s accurate, then sign here.”  
  
When he’s signed it and stands up to leave, she says, “I’ll be keeping my eye on you, Mr. Rollins.”  
  
He’ll definitely have to be more careful in the future.

...

At his loft, he strips off his clothes (the shirt might be a loss) and examines his wound in the wide bathroom mirror. Where the bullet dug a furrow across his ribs there’s now just a swath of new pink skin. It’s warm to the touch, but that’s normal. By tomorrow it’ll be just another scar, sooner if he feeds tonight. There’s a knock at the door, polite but firm. He throws on some sweats and a T-shirt and pads barefoot across the expanse of hardwood. He’s not surprised to see Finch on the other side of the door.  
  
“Hello, Mr. Reese. I wanted to make sure you were all right.” He steps inside and stands there awkwardly in his expensive wool overcoat.  
  
“I’m fine, Finch,” says John as he closes the door.  
  
The wizard sweeps his eyes up and down John’s body. “So I see.” He turns his gaze to the row of windows, where the two of them are reflected in the black panes against a sea of city lights. “I must say, Mr. Reese, I was very impressed with how you handled yourself back there. I wasn’t aware you had such a degree of combat skill.” He looks up at John sideways through his glasses.  
  
John makes a mental note never to underestimate the extent of Finch’s surveillance. “People can surprise you,” he says in his blandest voice. “Even demons.”  
  
“Yes, I’m learning that,” says Finch. “For example, I could have sworn I saw you get shot earlier tonight.”  
  
John could put him off with a plausible lie, which Finch would probably pretend to believe. But he doesn’t. Instead, he lifts the hem of his T-shirt to show the healing scar. Finch’s eyes widen behind his glasses. His hand reaches out as if to touch it, but then he seems to recall himself and quickly pulls back.  
  
“How?” he asks.  
  
John shrugs. “It’s a demon thing.”  
  
Looking up at him through narrowed eyes, Finch says, “You fed on Copeland, didn’t you? Is he all right?”  
  
John lets his T-shirt drop. “He’s fine. A few days’ rest and a couple square meals, and he’ll be good as new.” He turns and walks into the open living room-area-thing, leaving the other man to follow or not.  
  
“He may recover physically,” says Finch, limping after him, “but I doubt the experience will leave him without psychological scars.”  
  
John slides onto a sofa, propping one bare foot across his knee. “He wasn’t exactly complaining at the time.”  
  
“Really, Mr. Reese! I hope I don’t need to lecture you on the importance of consent!”  
  
“Finch,” John says slowly. “He was trying to kill Maria. He _shot_ me. I think he’d given up his right to that kind of consideration, don’t you?”  
  
Finch frowns down at him. “And what about the men you met at that dance club last night? Had they given up their right to consideration too?”  
  
“So you _were_ listening!” John can’t keep his mouth from rising at the corners.  
  
Finch is anything but amused. His cheeks flush and his voice sharpens as he says, “This arrangement isn’t working, Mr. Reese. I can’t in good conscience ally myself with the sort of creature who—”  
  
“Finch, listen!” John holds up his palms, smile gone. _Creature_ stings more than he wants to admit. “It wasn’t like that. The men I fed on last night—that was totally different from Copeland.”  
  
“How so?” Finch is listening, albeit reluctantly.  
  
John sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He’s not used to explaining this. It’s the sort of thing demons like to keep close to the vest; the more that people know about you, the more they can exploit you. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, both feet planted on the rug. “Basically, there’s two kinds of feeding. Let’s call it…passive and active.”  
  
Finch nods, giving John his whole attention, which is a little disconcerting.  
  
“Active is what I did with that guy today. It’s pulling out energy—sexual energy—like…like pumping water out of a well. It’s fast and invasive and it gives you a lot of power very quickly. It’s a life-or-death kind of thing.”  
  
“For you or for them?” asks Finch dryly.  
  
John acknowledges the point with a nod. “It can be both, if you take too much too quickly. They won’t care—it feels good. But yes, you can kill someone that way.” He hopes Finch is remembering that he didn’t, that he chose to leave his prey alive even though he could have killed him by the terms of his contract, since Copeland had threatened both John’s life and an innocent’s. “What I did at the club last night, you could call that passive feeding. It’s sort of…taking what’s already there, in the atmosphere. You stoke someone’s arousal and then you absorb what they emit.”  
  
“And that’s enough?” asks Finch, looking fascinated despite himself. He finally sits down on the other couch, but he doesn’t take off his coat.  
  
“It’s enough to keep you alive. The more you arouse the person, the more there is to feed on.” John has a brief memory of kneeling in a bathroom stall, a warm cock full and salty in his mouth, his lips and tongue sliding up and down as energy flowed into him in lapping waves, making him shiver with pleasure and hunger. Had Finch overheard the slurping noises he made, or his partner’s whispered curses? How had he felt as he sat there listening? Aroused? Disgusted? Curious?  
  
Finch says, “How often do you need to do this sort of…feeding?”  
  
John shrugs. “Once a day, on average. But I can fill up the tank, so to speak, and go for a week or two without.” He had to do that for missions, last time he was here. Kara always made sure he fed well beforehand. His stomach clenches and he pushes away the memory.  
  
Finch is looking at him like a zoologist who’s discovered a new species. “And do you always feed on men?”  
  
“No. Actually, women are often a bigger ‘meal.’ But it takes longer.” Finch blinks, his cheeks pinking a little. “I don’t mean just to climax,” explains John. “They’re more wary of taking home a stranger. It takes longer to get them to trust you. Men are easy. And I can make up the difference by feeding on several in a row.” Or all at once—but John doesn’t say so, deciding Finch has had enough shocks for one night.  
  
Finch leans back in his chair, looking thoughtful. “And this”—he waves his hand vaguely—“ ‘stoking arousal.’ How does it work?”  
  
John’s eyebrows practically lift themselves. “In the usual way. Do you want me to show you, Harold?”  
  
Finch lets out an annoyed huff. “Of course, I understand that. What I mean is—is the desire something you’re creating in them? Something imposed from without, as it were, rather than generated by the victim himself?”  
  
“No,” says John, frowning at the word _victim_. “I need something to work with, some spark.” Even with Copeland; the guy had been turned on by the violence he was carrying out.    
  
“But you increase it,” says Finch. “That’s your doing.”  
  
“You don’t have to be an incubus to increase desire, Finch. I’m only doing what humans do to each other all the time. Maybe I give it a little extra juice sometimes, but I don’t enchant people, if that’s what you’re thinking.”  
  
“But if you weren’t an incubus, would people still be drawn to you? Without your aura of…well…sex?”  
  
“Most people seem to think I’m pretty good-looking,” says John, not without humour.  
  
“Yes, but—”  
  
“Finch, if I weren’t an incubus, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This is like breathing air to me. I promise you I’m not interested in taking advantage of anyone. For one thing, it’s boring. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”  
  
Finch sits back, hands on his knees. “Well,” he says, his mouth twisting to one side, “I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with that.” He heaves himself to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Reese.”  
  
“Wait, Finch. You don’t have to go.” John can’t sense any arousal rising off him—nothing at all, which makes him think Finch has got himself locked down under a magical shield. But he’s pretty sure there’s interest there. Curiosity, at least. “I could show you,” he says, his voice low.  
  
“That’s not what I summoned you for, Mr. Reese,” Finch says crisply, and limps out the door.


	4. Chapter 4

If the direct approach won’t work—and clearly it won’t—John decides he’ll just have to worm his way inside Finch’s defences. He makes a point of always showing up at the library with a cup of sencha (turns out there are different kinds of green tea—who knew?). When he notices Finch adding sugar to his tea, he makes a detour on his next bagel run to pick up almond croissants. Finch devours one absently while staring at the latest photos on the board, then looks down at his napkin with its grease smudge and dusting of icing sugar like he’s trying to figure out where it went. John hides a triumphant smirk. After that, he always stops by a patisserie on the way to the library, bringing Finch millefeuilles, Napoléons, lemon tarts, and eclairs.  
  
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your taste,” says Finch, nibbling his way through a flaky pain au chocolat, “but I’m not sure it’s doing my health any favours—not to mention my waistline.” There’s a tiny smear of chocolate on the corner of his mouth and John wonders how Finch would react if he licked it off.  
  
“I like your waistline,” he says, eyeing the curve of Finch’s tummy under his soft-looking vest. (Is it velvet? John wants to stroke it to find out.) Finch rolls his eyes and emits the obligatory huff. He doesn’t stop eating the pastries, though. The next day, John comes across the wizard doing pushups in the middle of the stacks. He has a book open below him on the floor, like he’s trying to read at the same time, and John has to bite his lip to keep from laughing. At that moment, Finch looks up, sees John, and staggers clumsily to his feet, red-faced.  
  
John steps forward and gives him a hand. “Have you tried swimming?” he asks helpfully. Finch makes an exasperated noise, but John’s learning to read Finch’s noises and he thinks this one’s more embarrassed than annoyed.  
  
He tries to follow Finch home, of course. Repeatedly. But the man seems to have a sixth sense for when he’s being tailed. John doesn’t know how he does it; if Finch is using a warning spell, John can’t sniff it out. The closest Finch comes to letting his guard down is when they’re working the numbers.  
  
After Maria Jones comes Ryan Slater, a car mechanic whose medical debts led him to take a questionable deal with a loan shark. John beats up the shark’s goons and persuades their boss to waive the interest on Slater’s loan. Meanwhile, the subject’s medical bills are paid by an anonymous benefactor. When John asks about it, Finch only purses his lips and looks mysterious. _What a softie_ , thinks John.  
  
Then there’s Jamie Pulanski, whose stalker ex just bought an unregistered gun. John hangs the ex out a window and makes him promise to take no for an answer from now on. “Very creative,” says Finch.  
  
Mrs. Paula Santiago has a great-nephew who thinks he’ll get her house if he runs her over with his buddy’s car. Finch sends Detective Carter a recording of an incriminating conversation between the nephew and his buddy, courtesy of John and the phone-cloning spell. John watches from behind Mrs. Santiago’s porch as Carter picks the nephew up. The recording won’t be admissible as evidence, but hopefully the would-be perp will crack under questioning.  
  
“You seem to have quite a knack for this, Mr. Reese,” Finch says when John reports in at the library. Finch is radiating satisfaction as he takes Mrs. Santiago’s photo down, and John swells with pride in a way he can’t remember doing in a long time. He likes his job, he realizes. He’s helping people, and it feels good. He’s also pleasing his summoner, and that feels even better. _Careful_ , he thinks. _Remember what happened last time_.

***

 _What_ is _that?_ ” says Finch, rising from his computer chair.  
  
“It’s a dog.” John slides the duffle bag off his shoulder and lets it fall to the library floor with a clink.  
  
Finch glances at the bag, but as John hoped, his attention is focused on the animal. “I’m no expert on dog breeds, Mr. Reese,” he says, “but I’m quite certain red eyes and six-inch fangs are not usual.”  
  
“He’s a hellhound,” admits John. The hound looks up at him with its jaw open and its black tongue lolling between its fangs. A few drops of ichorous slobber fall onto the linoleum between its wide, flaming paws.  
  
Finch’s mouth turns down at the corners. “And _what_ ,” he says, putting an extra spin on the _wh_ , “is it doing _here?_ ”  
  
John scratches it behind the ears, watching as its blood-red eyes go heavy-lidded with pleasure and its tail sweeps back and forth. “His previous owner kindly let me take him, since he had no idea how to handle him himself.”  
  
“So essentially you stole him,” says Finch, crossing his arms.  
  
John looks up earnestly. “The guy was bad news, Finch. A drug dealer and a gun-runner.” He was threatening their latest number, who’s been given a ticket out of town and a new identity courtesy of Finch.  
  
“I see. And I suppose he also gave you the bulk of his arsenal in that bag?”  
  
So Finch did notice. Of course he did. Mildly, John says, “Better it’s with me than on the streets, don’t you think?”  
  
Finch sighs loudly enough to make sure everyone—even the dog—knows how put-upon he feels. “Well, as long as you keep your weaponry somewhere secure…” John intends to cache it around the stacks, but Finch doesn’t need to know that. “As for the creature,” Finch continues, “what about its registration? You can’t just keep a hellhound without a license, you know.”  
  
John holds up a ring dangling two bone-shaped tags. “His former owner was nice enough to hand that over too.” He tosses them to Finch, who catches them in both hands. “He needs a human owner, though.”  
  
“So _I’m_ to be responsible for it? It seems to me the easiest thing would be to send it back to where it came from.”  
  
“Don’t say that. He’ll hear you.” As if he knows what they’re saying, the hound makes big sad (red) puppy eyes at Finch. John does the same. He thinks it’s a toss-up which of them does it better.  
  
Finch huffs at them both, but it’s a caving-in kind of huff. “I suppose,” he says in a resigned voice, “that a trip to the pet store is in order. What do hellhounds like to eat?”  
  
“The souls of the damned.”  
  
Finch’s eyebrows shoot up, then flatten. “Very funny, Mr. Reese.”  
  
An hour later, the hound is curled up in a brand new dog bed and making short work of a huge rawhide bone with its enormous teeth. Finch has already worked some computer magic to put his name on the registration and license records, and now he has a number of library books on dog breeds spread open across his desk. John watches him curiously, a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis forgotten in his hands. The wizard picks up a new dog collar and runs the heavy leather through his fingers. John smells a sharp whiff of magic. “That should do it,” says Finch. Then, to the dog, “Come here, boy!”  
  
The hound perks up its ears and looks at Finch, but doesn’t move from its bed.  
  
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” says John. “His summoner was South African, so the only language he understands is Afrikaans.”  
  
“Really. Afrikaans.”  
  
“It’s a lot like Dutch. _Kom!_ ” The hound leaps up and is at John’s side in an instant.  
  
“How on earth did you discover that?”  
  
John’s instinct is to evade the question, but he wants Finch to trust him. “There aren’t a lot of wizards in this country who work with hellhounds,” he says. “They look impressive, but they can be difficult to reason with. And sometimes they refuse to follow orders and can even turn on their summoners if they don’t like how they’re being handled.”  
  
“Unlike other types of demon,” says Finch with an ironic twist to his mouth.  
  
John ignores the dig. “A few years back, I infiltrated a white supremacist group in Idaho.” Finch’s eyebrows jump in surprise. “They had a South African wizard from the old regime with a thing for hellhounds. Saw them as kind of mascots for the cause. He always worked his spells in Afrikaans, so he never bothered to teach the hounds English or any other language. I picked up a few words. You could say I had an affinity for the breed.”  
  
“And how did you know this was one of his?” asks Finch curiously.  
  
John scratches the hound’s chest, ignoring the spectral flames licking up its paws. “Like I said, there aren’t a lot of wizards in this country who use hellhounds. And his were never taken into custody. When we arrested him, he said he sent them back, but I always figured he got warned somehow and sold them on instead.”  
  
Finch is fairly quivering with questions, but to John’s surprise he only says, “I see. Well then, _kom_.” The hound trots over to him obediently, and Finch buckles the heavy collar around its neck. Watching, John feels a strange flutter in the pit of his stomach. Finch smooths the collar with his precise fingers, and suddenly the hellhound looks like an ordinary dog.  
  
Well, not ordinary—it’s huge—but a perfectly plausible earthly dog. John has to squint to see the hellhound underneath, and he doubts he’d have noticed if he hadn’t already known what it was. “Nice job,” he says, impressed. Really, he should be used to Finch’s skill by now.  
  
“Thank you,” says the wizard, preening a little. “It’s a Belgian Malinois. I tried to choose a breed that matched his true form as closely as possible. What shall we call him?”  
  
After that, Bear becomes a fixture in the library, napping in the dog bed while Finch taps away on his computers. He also gets Finch outside twice a day, which does the wizard good, if his improved skin tone is anything to go by. The hound loves John from the get-go, treating him like a kind of big brother and playmate, but he clearly considers Finch his master. He’s a hellhound, after all—he knows power when he smells it.  
  
Sometimes John takes Bear with him on cases, and one day Finch comes along with both of them to the park. It’s sunny and cold, what people call crisp weather, John thinks. Their breaths make misty puffs in the air, and the paths are scattered with fallen leaves. Bear is soon romping like a puppy with a friendly pug, the pair of them looking laughably mismatched, while Finch stares at a tree.  
  
“Finch?”  
  
“A yellow-bellied sapsucker,” he says. His nose and cheeks are red with cold and his eyes are sparkling. “And there.” He points. “A titmouse.”  
  
John has no idea what he’s pointing at. “These are…birds?”  
  
“Of course,” says Finch, shooting him a half-smile. “There are an astonishing number of bird species in the city. It’s a rich environment for birding, or twitching, as the British call it.”  
  
“Twitching, huh? Sounds about right,” says John with a half-smile of his own.  
  
“It’s a rewarding pursuit,” Finch admonishes him. “And it gives one an excellent excuse to carry around a pair of binoculars.” He reaches into his coat and pulls out a pair of compact high-powered binoculars, ideal for surveillance.  
  
“Very clever, Finch.”  
  
Finch merely raises his eyebrows in a way that means _I know_. “No sign of our number yet,” he says, lifting the binoculars to scan the brownstone across from the park.  
  
“Give him time.”  
  
One peregrine falcon and a pair of white-breasted nuthatches later, the number, Tony Rubio, emerges from his building. They follow him, after tearing Bear away from his new friend. Not half a block later, two large men in dark suits climb out of a Lincoln and begin shadowing Rubio down the street. “Stay back, Finch,” says John.  
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
John catches up to them behind a Dumpster just as they’re drawing their weapons. Rubio has pressed himself up against the bricks like he’s trying to melt through the wall. Bear leaps on one goon while John disarms the other with a gun pressed to his ribs.  
  
By the time Finch arrives, breathless, the two goons are on the pavement and Bear is barking madly at them. They’re both writhing in fear, arms over their heads. One is screaming “Call it off!” while the other only whimpers. The smell of urine cuts through the air as a steaming rivulet crawls across the pavement.  
  
After the bad guys are in flex cuffs, Rubio thanks John profusely, promising to steer clear of mafiosi in the future. Sirens keen in the distance, so John and Finch collect Bear and beat a quick retreat.  
  
A few blocks later, John’s still coming down from the adrenaline high when Finch turns to him and says, “Bear feeds on fear, doesn’t he?”  
  
John’s fingers stroke the hound’s head unconsciously, as though trying to reassure him. “He can’t help it. It’s just the way he’s made.”  
  
“Hm.” Finch looks down at Bear, who’s panting affably. “I could _feel_ him provoking it in those men. And I can’t say I’m sorry. But I’ve never felt a hint of fear around him, myself. If anything, I feel less anxious since you brought him home than I did before.”  
  
_Home_ , John notices, feeling smug. He says, “Bear might be siphoning off whatever fear you usually feel. He can probably decrease it as well as increase it, if he wants.”  
  
“But why would he want to decrease that which he feeds on?”  
  
John shrugs. “You’re his master. He wants to make you happy.”  
  
“Really?” Finch peers down at Bear again. The hound looks up at him and wags his tail. “Good boy,” murmurs Finch. More tail-wagging.  
  
As they walk, Finch takes off his glasses and wipes them with a handkerchief, staring thoughtfully off into traffic. Putting them back on, he says, “Even if he gets some kind of sustenance from whatever fear I give off—and I’ll grant you I’m not the most sanguine of men—surely it can’t be enough to engender that kind of loyalty.” He looks up at John. “Isn’t it just a matter of automatic obedience to whoever’s name is on his license?”  
  
“What do you think, Finch?” says John softly. “Do you think Bear would rather have a different master?” Finch’s hand tightens on the leash. “Do you think,” says John, “he’d have a hard time letting you know if he was dissatisfied?”  
  
“No…I suppose not.”  
  
“Besides, don’t sell yourself short. I’m guessing your fear is pretty potent, even in small doses.”  
  
“What?” says Finch, looking startled. “What do you mean?”  
  
John probably shouldn’t share this, but oh well. “People’s energies are different. With some people…” He waves a hand, trying to think of how to describe it. “It’s like trying to get drunk on light beer. You know what I mean?”  
  
“So I’m, what, in your analogy? A cocktail?”  
  
“More like a double shot of bourbon, I’d guess,” says John, grinning.  
  
Finch, predictably, rolls his eyes, but his cheeks are flushed with more than the cold.  
  
That night, after their work is finished, John waits across the street from the library until Finch comes limping out. To his surprise, the wizard leads him to a private building with a glass-walled pool. John watches through the tall windows as he emerges from the changing room wearing a pair of navy blue trunks and carrying a paddle board, and climbs into the water. He’s the only person using the pool—maybe he bought out the whole building just to have privacy, or maybe he slipped Maintenance a hefty bribe to head off other tenants.  
  
Supporting his upper body on the board, Finch kicks his way down the lane in a series of uneven jerks. John watches his slow, determined progress back and forth across the pool, hair dark with water and plastered flat to his head, expression intent. When at last he climbs out, John can see the ropy scar that runs along his upper spine.  
  
John hopes he’s finally found Finch’s residence, but he’s not really surprised when the wizard steps out of the building, buttoning his coat, and walks off down the street. He tries to follow, but Finch loses him around the next corner.


	5. Chapter 5

“This music is better,” says John approvingly as he walks into the library carrying coffee, sencha, and a box of “artisanal donuts” (whatever that means). Bear raises his head and thumps his tail against the floor in greeting.  
  
“Good morning, Mr. Reese.” Finch swivels away from his screen, looking pleased. “It’s Johann Sebastian Bach. The Brandenberg Concertos. I’m glad you like it.”  
  
“Sure. No cats.”  
  
Finch skewers him with a look. “What sort of music _do_ you like, Mr. Reese?”  
  
John shrugs. “I never really thought about it. I usually just listen to whatever’s playing.” He searches his memory for something more specific. “Amy Winehouse. I like her.”  
  
“Ah, yes. A very rich voice. It’s a pity she’s no longer with us.”  
  
“Amy Winehouse died?” He puts down his donut. “Well, now I’m depressed.”  
  
Their number that day is a nineteen-year-old male named Cam Miller. His last known address is a court-mandated rehab program in Queens, where his parents live in one half of an aluminium-sided duplex. John knocks on their door, but it turns out they haven’t seen Cam in months. He can tell by their faces they’ve given up on him. But they do give him the address of Miller’s girlfriend, Lydia.  
  
Lydia’s house is one step up from a squat, with a steady stream of addicts coming and going; it might as well have a revolving door. Lydia, hollow-eyed and chewing on her nails, tells him she hasn’t seen Cam in a while.  
  
“When was the last time you saw him?”  
  
“Dunno.” She gnaws some more, though she’s hardly got any fingernails left. “Long time ago.”  
  
Finch makes a sceptical _hmm_ in his ear. Even he can tell she’s lying.  
  
The other people in the house give John a wide berth, assuming he’s a cop, so he crosses the street, lets himself into a car, and settles down to wait. Finch’s tapping keyboard makes a soothing background.  
  
“I’ve taken the liberty of downloading some music to your phone,” he says.  
  
John pulls out his phone and thumbs it on. “ ‘Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’? I didn’t think this was your sort of music, Finch.”  
  
“Every genre has its virtuosi, Mr. Reese.”  
  
Before he can think of a reply, a skinny guy with too much beard and an antsy step jogs up the front steps—Miller. Lydia opens the door and he squeezes inside. John can’t hear what they’re saying (there were too many phones in the place to do his usual trick with Finch’s magic doodad), but in a minute the pair of them come out the front door carrying a purple backpack. As they leave, they keep looking over their shoulders like they’re worried they’re being watched. _Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,_ thinks John with some amusement as he climbs out of the car to follow them. “Looks like they’re heading to a deal,” he murmurs to Finch.  
  
“Some sort of crime spree, perhaps?” speculates Finch. “A would-be Bonnie and Clyde?”  
  
“More like Sid and Nancy.” He tails them easily—they’re paranoid, but they don’t know what to look for—and eventually they turn into a three-storey parking structure made of smog-grey cement. Over half the parking slots are empty; whoever works in the surrounding office blocks, they’ve all gone home for the weekend. Voices echo between the cement pillars. John creeps towards them, drawing his gun.  
  
“Do be careful, Mr. Reese,” murmurs Finch in his ear. He actually sounds kind of worried.  
  
The deal’s going down on the hood of a white Ford truck. Across from Sid and Nancy are two guys in designer track suits with gold chains—your typical bridge-and-tunnel traffic. They’re both white, but one of them’s wearing cornrows; John kind of wants to shoot him just on principle. All four of them look pretty skittish. It’s the kind of low-level, unprofessional transaction that gets people killed through sheer stupidity. John sneaks closer, keeping an eye on the gun sticking out of the waistband of one pair of track pants.  
  
Bridge and Tunnel heave a black duffle bag onto the hood of the truck and open it to show Cam the contents. He peers inside, then looks at Lydia, who nods. As Cam sets the purple backpack on the hood and starts to unzip it, the hairs on the back of John’s neck stand on end. _Here it comes._  
  
Sure enough, Cam yanks out a Glock and points it at Bridge. “Nobody move!” he shrills. Of course Tunnel immediately draws his weapon, and the two of them stare at each other like kids at a junior high dance waiting for the other one to make the first move.  
  
John’s pretty sure Cam won’t shoot. If he’d had it in him, he would’ve done it while Tunnel was pulling his gun. So John puts a bullet in the thug’s knee, the shot ringing loud in the garage.  
  
Cam gapes at Tunnel, who’s writhing on the ground and holding his bleeding leg in both hands. Bridge immediately jumps on Cam, wrestling him for the Glock.  
  
John fires a shot over their heads and growls, “Down on the ground!” They break it up, at least, and then he’s close enough to shove Bridge to the ground and take the gun from Cam, who gives it up like he’s glad to be rid of the thing. Now he just needs to get the other one…  
  
It’s on the asphalt two feet away from the truck’s wheel, and Lydia’s nail-bitten fingers are crawling towards it. “Don’t,” says John. She stops.  
  
He puts them in flex cuffs and tosses them into the bed of the truck, first Bridge and Tunnel, then Cam. “You too,” he says to Lydia. She stumbles and falls against him, and he—stupidly, stupidly—doesn’t see the knife until it’s buried to the hilt in his abdomen.  
  
He shoves her back with a grunt, wrapping one hand around her throat. He doesn’t squeeze, he pulls. Her eyes roll up and a second later she whimpers and goes slack. It’s enough energy that when he pulls out the knife, his guts start to knit themselves painfully back together.  
   
“Mr. Reese?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he grunts.  
  
“The police are on their way. You need to leave.”  
  
Shoving the knife in his pocket (no need to leave his DNA at a crime scene), he staggers to the stairwell, one hand cradling his belly.

***

“Are you sure you’re quite all right?” Finch is hovering over the library couch, all but wringing his hands. Next to him, Bear whines anxiously.  
  
From where he’s sprawled across the scratchy cushions, John says, “It’s okay, Finch. It looks worse than it is.” He’s managed to peel off his heavy coat and toss it over a chair, and Finch helps him out of his jacket. Underneath, his white shirt is red up to the middle buttons—another one gone. He pulls out the tails and undoes the lower half to reveal a raw-looking wound. Finch makes a sound of distress and picks up the first aid kit, which he had ready and waiting at the bottom of the stairs when John shuffled in. It’d be kind of sweet if it wasn’t so misguided.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says again. “The internal damage has fixed itself, I can feel it.” His lower belly is sore and tingles with the aching, fizzing warmth that accompanies magical healing. “It’s mostly surface-level damage now. A quick Grindr date and I’ll be good as new.” Next to him, Bear lays his chin on the couch and looks up at him with worried eyes.  
  
“If you’re sure…” says Finch doubtfully, setting aside the useless first aid kit. “At least let me get you some water.”  
  
He returns in the blink of an eye with a cool glass, which John empties gratefully. He’s not looking forward to hunting in this condition. Desperation isn’t a good look on anyone. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, sinking into the couch with its familiar smells of library, Finch, Bear, and safety.  
  
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” declares Finch suddenly.  
  
John opens his eyes with a start. He wasn’t asleep. Just resting. Bear licks his face from where he’s teleported himself onto the couch.  
  
“Mr. Reese.” Finch is sitting up very straight in his chair and there are two spots of colour high on his cheeks. “Why don’t you— That is, could you…feed on me?”  
  
“On you?”  
  
His colour deepens. “It’s absurd for you to go traipsing about in that condition when you have the means to heal yourself right here. That is…”—he licks his lips, suddenly nervous—“…if you would be amenable to, uh. Using me.”  
  
John sits up, wincing, and says, “Finch, are you sure?”  
  
“Yes. You won’t…take too much, will you? I mean, just enough to—”  
  
“Just enough to heal. I promise.”  
  
“Good. Well, that’s all right, then.” He takes a breath, steeling himself. “What do you need me to do?”  
  
John almost wants to laugh. This must be his most awkward seduction ever. Something quivers in his stomach that has nothing to do with healing. “You could start by sitting next to me,” he says.  
  
They push Bear off the couch, and he goes to his bed with an annoyed huff worthy of his owner. Then Finch sits down gingerly next to him, not touching, his hands clasped in his lap. “What now?” he asks, a little breathlessly. “Should I, uh, take off something?” He looks down at his vest like he’s contemplating removing a layer of skin.  
  
“Not unless you want to.” John wipes his hand on a clean part of his shirt and holds it out, palm up. “Here. May I?”  
  
Finch slides his hand into John’s. It’s cool and soft. He wraps Finch’s narrow fingers in a gentle grip and lets his magic unfurl. It catches a spark almost at once. Power starts flowing into him, a trickle of sweetness. Finch gasps, and John tastes warm ginger with a hint of lemony tartness.  
  
The trickle widens into a stream, and it’s not sweet anymore but strong—good God, it’s strong! He almost swoons with it. It’s heady and delicious, and it feels so good he could weep. He wants to gulp it down, fill himself up until he bursts.    
  
Finch makes a noise—a quiet whimper—that pulls John abruptly back to himself. His body is thrumming with power; he shouldn’t have taken so much. He yanks back his magic and opens his eyes.  
  
Finch is flushed and breathing heavily. When he opens his eyes, his pupils are wide and dark in contrast to his pale irises. “How extraordinary,” he breathes.  
  
“Are you all right? Any dizziness? Weakness?”  
  
“No, I don’t believe so.” Finch looks down at himself, frowning slightly. “Why? Should there be?”  
  
John lets out a breath. “No, just checking.”  
  
“Was that enough?”  
  
Considering he's buzzed like a teenager after a plate of Jello shots… “Yeah,” he says, “that’ll do.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Trust me, Finch. Your magic is…pretty potent.”  
  
“Oh, I see. A double bourbon?” he says wryly.  
  
A grin tugs at John’s mouth. “Tastier. A forty-year-old single malt.”  
  
“Rather more than forty, I’m afraid, Mr. Reese.”  
  
He laughs, feeling almost giddy, and Finch flashes him a full-on smile.  
  
He doesn’t need to see the erection nudging at Finch’s trousers to know he’s aroused. Placing a hand on his thigh, he asks, “Can I?” Magic is fizzing along his skin, plucking his nerves like harp strings. When Harold comes, it’s going to feel _amazing_.  
  
Finch’s smile drops off his face. “Ah, no…no. That’s quite all right. Thank you for the offer, but…” He surges to his feet and hobbles towards the stacks, his limp pronounced. There’s an improvised bedroom behind Social Sciences where he keeps a fold-out bed and some spare suits; for a second John hopes he intended for him to follow. But Finch pauses with his hand on a bookcase and says without looking back, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Reese.”  
  
In his oversized loft, John shucks his suit, his ruined shirt, his shoes, pants, and boxer-briefs, and lies on his bed staring at the stripes of late-afternoon light on the ceiling. The honey-ginger-lemon is still vivid on his tongue. Closing his eyes, he relives the rush of Harold’s energy, like electricity skipping across his nerves. The sheer power of it! He feels like he could forego sleep and food for a week if he wanted to, and that was after just a sip.  
  
His body has reacted predictably: he’s aching from his waist to his thighs. He licks his hand and slides it down around his dick. A few strokes and he’s hard, cock hot and straining in his fist. With his other hand, he rolls his balls between his fingers. Harold’s gasp replays in his mind, followed by his quiet, desperate whimper. John could make him come so hard—could shatter the man’s careful self-control beyond repair. His fist speeds up desperately, and then he’s cresting the wave and his release is spurting wet onto his belly.  
  
He should have guessed that feeding on Finch would be like dining at a Michelin-star restaurant. How the hell is he supposed to go back to regular food now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I wrote this before Sharon Jones died. Stupid 2016 :( Incidentally, the Dap Kings were the backing band on Back to Black.


	6. Chapter 6

John blames his distraction with Finch for why it takes him so long to clock that he’s being tailed. He’s gotten lazy, too, knowing the wizard will immediately spot and nullify any surveillance spells. But there’s an itch on the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades, an itch persistent enough it penetrates his hamster-wheeling thoughts of Finch’s taste and feel that afternoon on the couch. Next to him, Bear seems tense, scenting the air repeatedly.  
  
It takes over an hour of walking around and checking reflective surfaces before he catches the telltale flash of black in his peripheral vision. A minute later the cold autumn air brings him a faint, familiar smell. No wonder Bear was nervous.  
  
“He’s a demon named Snow,” he tells Finch later in the library. “Works for the CIA.”  
  
“A former colleague of yours?”    
  
John goes still. He never said anything to Finch about his last job. “You knew?”  
  
The wizard swivels his chair away from his screens to face John, who’s standing behind him with his hands loose at his sides. Bear watches them both alertly from his dog bed. “I did a little investigating,” admits Finch, almost apologetically. “To someone who knows what they’re looking for, it was rather obvious.”  
  
Right. Finch probably hacks Langley every morning before breakfast. How much does he know about John’s past? About the things he used to do? His mouth dry, he says, “Snow and I worked together. We were both in Operation Blackwing—a program that used unregistered demons for black ops.” So-called wet work. “Highly unofficial, with loads of plausible deniability.”  
  
“Yes,” says Finch dryly, “I know the type. So it’s safe to say the Company knows you’re back on this side. What do you think they want with you?”  
  
John shrugs with a carelessness he doesn’t feel. “Considering the last time I saw Snow, he had me shot, I’m guessing they want to kill me.”  
  
“Mr. Reese!” says Finch, appalled. It _is_ appalling; it’s nice to be reminded of that. “Sit down,” he orders, herding John over to the couch. He rolls over a chair so he can look at him without turning his head. “Why does the CIA want to kill you?”  
  
Bear joins them, sensing a convo, and John runs his hands over the hound’s silky ears. “There was an op, in China,” he says. “Retrieve and destroy.”  
  
Finch doesn’t move or say anything, so he continues, still looking at Bear. “Before the op, Snow took me aside and told me to eliminate my partner after we were done with the target. He said my contract had been voided so there wouldn’t be a problem. She was my summoner,” he explains.  
  
“I see.”  
  
“Turned out Snow gave her the same orders. She hit me first, and then the whole target was blown sky-high, taking us with it. Or at least that was the plan.” Bear whines as John scratches under his ears.  
  
“But you survived,” says Finch softly.  
  
“Demons are hard to kill. We’re like cockroaches that way.”  
  
Finch presses his lips together like he’s holding back a retort. Then he asks, “If your contract was voided and you were presumed dead, why go back to the other side? Why not stay?”  
  
Bear’s fur is rough-smooth, and he can feel a tickle of magic whenever his fingers brush the hound’s collar. Finch’s magic carries a subtle warmth that makes him feel relaxed and alert at the same time. “I didn’t really decide to go back. But I couldn’t think of a reason to stay. I stopped trying to hold myself here, and eventually I just…slipped away.”  
  
He doesn’t like the furrow between Finch’s eyebrows or the way his mouth turns down at the corners. “It was a long time ago, Finch,” he says. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear it.” The sympathy in his eyes is unrelenting. At last he breaks eye contact to look at the tall covered windows, the rows of books. “I’m wondering… You survived the explosion. What about your erstwhile summoner?”  
  
John’s neck prickles with phantom pain. “Kara Stanton.”  
  
“Is there a chance she might be alive as well?”  
  
“I hope not,” he says quietly.  
  
Finch returns to his computers and starts trolling through surveillance records, tracing John’s path from that morning, until he captures a usable image of Snow’s face. Then he runs a facial-recognition spell to see what the demon’s been up to. “Looks like he’s been talking to Detective Carter,” he says, “so we can assume he’s found your cover identity. Hopefully, she won’t give him much more than that. Her latest investigations have brought her a little closer to us than I’d like.”  
  
“Carter won’t give us up,” says John, with maybe a little more confidence than he feels. “She knows we’re the good guys, even if she doesn’t see eye-to-eye about our methods.”  
  
“Yes, well, let’s hope you’re right.”

***

A few nights later, John is stumbling down a fire escape with two bullet holes in his chest. It’s not Carter’s fault. She’s just a police detective—it’s not like she can tell the government to go to hell. Anyway, now is not the time to examine his apparent soft spot and think about all the ways his stupidity will probably get him killed.  
  
When he hits the ground, a grey BMW screeches into the alley. Finch climbs out, his face white and more pinched-looking than usual. John kept telling him not to come, but he’s a stubborn little bastard. John sags onto the smaller man’s shoulder, trying somehow not to weigh too much. But Finch has him: he leans on his good leg and wraps an arm around him, palm splayed against the middle of his back. He’s just gotten the back door open when Carter comes clanging down the final rungs of the fire escape and jumps to the ground, drawing her weapon.  
  
For a second they all freeze and stare at each other like a weird diorama: Cop and Criminals. Then Carter lowers her gun. “Get going,” she says, with a jerk of her chin. John realizes his relief is about more than just getting away.  
  
Finch angles him into the back seat, where he slides across plush upholstery until he’s half lying down; Finch has to bend his knees for him and tuck his feet into the footwell. “John,” he says, grabbing his hand (his hand is so warm!) “take as much as you need.”  
  
He’s telling him to feed. John shakes his head. “Need to get out of here,” he wheezes around the whistling air in his punctured lung. “Not safe.”  
  
“It’s not a successful rescue if you die in the attempt!”  
  
“Get outta here,” he insists. There’s a shout at the top of the fire escape, and bullets ping against brick and metal as Carter provides covering fire. He feels the door slam shut, and a moment later they’re backing swiftly out of the alley and whisking down the street.  
  
Streetlights chase each other across John’s closed eyelids. The next thing he knows, they’ve stopped and Finch is peering down at him from the open door, looking almost frantic.  
  
“Wher’re we?” He can see the side of a Dumpster and a bit of chain-link fence.  
  
“Somewhere safe enough for the moment. John, you _must_ feed!” The BMW’s suspension rocks as Finch clambers into the back seat, leaning his weight on his hands and his good knee. His face looms overhead, his breathing rapid—almost panicky—and then his mouth presses onto John’s.  
  
His lips are soft and warm. John feels a sort of befuddled gratitude at first— _how nice_ —and then the power floods into his veins. He gasps and his back arches as pulses of energy, huge and strong, surge into him like they’re being _shoved_. An incoherent noise escapes his lips. His hands are pulling Harold to him—Harold’s mouth now open and wet, his chest pressing into John’s, his hips, his legs—every point of contact is another circuit for energy to leap across and ground itself in John’s body. His body soaks it up like a sponge, replacing blood vessels, re-forming tissues, and healing so quickly it feels like he’s on fire.  
  
Their mouths part for Harold to catch a breath. John’s nerves are thrumming with his power, warm and sweet. He’s dizzy with it, feels like he’s high on some super-drug. “Finch,” he gasps. “Are you…?” The other man’s glasses are askew, his cheeks and neck flushed, his lips shiny red. He leans forward eagerly, but John holds him back with a hand spread just under his collarbone. “Are you okay?”  
  
“What?” Finch blinks and licks his lips. “Do you need more? I can give you more.” Another wave of energy rolls over him, honey-warm and dizzying.  
  
He groans aloud as he arches up to meet it. “Stop, I’m okay! Finch, we need to—” God, he can barely _think_. “To get somewhere safe.”  
  
“But you—” Finch has that stubborn look, ridiculous under his disheveled hair and kiss-reddened mouth.  
  
“It’s enough,” says John as his breath—and a little of his higher brain function—starts to return. “I’ll be fine till we get there. Really.”  
  
Nudging his glasses back into place with the back of his wrist, Finch unbuttons John’s shirt to inspect his wounds. “What the—” He tugs something out of his flesh and holds it up to the car’s ceiling light. It’s a bullet. Finch stares at it with mingled horror and fascination. “Your body  _extruded_ this.”  
  
“Yeah. I think the other one went right through, so we’re good.” Belatedly he notices a repetitive _ding, ding, ding_ —the back door’s been hanging open all this time. “We should go, Finch.”  
  
Finch reluctantly takes the wheel again, and the city passes by in a blur of lights. John opens his eyes as the car pulls into a small lot behind an old red-brick warehouse. He can almost climb out under his own steam. “I’m okay,” he says to Finch, leaning against the car roof.  
  
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Reese,” says Finch, taking his arm.  
  
Finch leads him through a side door into an old factory—one of the few in the area that hasn’t been converted into overpriced lofts. In the dim emergency lighting, he can make out rows of covered sewing machines. The equipment is a lot more modern than the architecture, with electrical cables snaking up to the ceiling from each station. Finch leads him easily between the rows; he’s clearly familiar with the layout.  
  
“Do you own a sweatshop, Finch?”  
  
He tsks. “I can assure you, the workforce is fully unionized.”  
  
“Of course they are,” says John, grinning to himself.  
  
In the freight elevator, he leans against the cage and Finch glances at his face anxiously. “I’m fine.” His wounds are only a faint, dull ache in his chest, but the rest of him feels like he’s just run several marathons end to end. Finch pushes the button for the top floor, and they ride up in silence. The door slides back onto a narrow corridor, which leads them to yet another elevator. This one is sleek, shining steel, with a retinal scanner. It reads one of Finch’s blue eyes and beeps them through. After rising a single floor, it opens directly into an apartment.  
  
John is expecting something spacious and modern, like his own loft, only more so. Instead, it’s…cozy.  
  
They’re in the old attics, under a slanted roof with a row of skylights like a Parisian atelier. There’s a thick Persian rug on the floor and rows of bookshelves lining the walls—no wonder Finch feels so at home in a library. The furniture is all curling brass floor lamps and cracked leather armchairs like something Humphrey Bogart would smoke in, and there’s even a fireplace (unlit) with a row of what are probably first editions lined up on the mantel. The whole place makes him think of Mr. Tumnus’s cave ( _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ was his second summoner’s favourite book).  
  
He barely has time to form this impression before he hears nails clicking on hardwood and Bear comes barrelling into him, wriggling ecstatically. John rubs his ears and makes the usual noises until the hound settles. Next to them, Finch finishes hanging his overcoat and scarf on a wooden hatstand.  
  
“This is where you live,” John says to him as he pats Bear. His voice is quietly awed. “Why did you bring me here?”  
  
Finch flushes, still facing the coats. “It was the safest place I could think of.” He turns to look at John, and his face grows worried. “You’re still awfully pale. And you’re sweating. Come here.”    
  
He doesn’t need to be asked twice. Swaying forward, he meets Finch’s lips with his own. Hands flutter from his shoulders to the sides of his face, warm and steady. As their lips slide together, Finch nudges energy into him in a series of small sips, like feeding a baby bird. John slants his mouth to let him in deeper, drinking in his desire.  
  
After uncountable minutes, he makes a heroic effort and pulls back. Harold’s lips relinquish his reluctantly, with a wet noise. His face is ruddy from John’s stubble.  
  
“Harold, you don’t have to, uh…” One of his palms is pressed against the rough wool of Harold’s lapel. He slides it up to his shoulder and his thumb slips over the crisp collar edge to stroke the flushed skin of his neck. Harold blinks slowly and licks his lips, and John forgets whatever he was about to say in favour of diving on his mouth again. Heat is building in his belly, and he doesn’t know if it’s lust or magic—a meaningless distinction in his case, anyway.  
  
That’s what he was trying to say. “Harold.” Harold is sucking on his lower lip and seems disinclined to stop. But he’s also still pouring power into John like a leaky pipe, so he gently eases him back and says, “You shouldn’t keep feeding me like that.”  
  
Harold frowns at him like a belligerent drunk. “I’ll stop when you’re entirely recovered, Mr. Reese, and not a moment before.”  
  
“It’s dangerous, and—”  
  
“Really, John, I’m not nearly as fragile as you seem to think.”  
  
“—and I can feed off you just fine without it.”  
  
He blinks. “Pardon?”  
  
“I can just—” John kisses his neck, a millimetre above the collar, “feed off—” and again, under the hinge of his jaw, “—your arousal,” and again, tasting the tender skin behind his ear.  
  
Harold lets out a stuttered breath. John starts sucking on the spot, worrying it gently between his teeth, careful not to break the skin with his sharp canines. Harold’s hands clench convulsively in his shirt. “Should I— _ah!_ Is there anything I should do to, um, maximize effect?”  
  
“Well,” says John, pulling back to look at him, “it’s always better if you come.”  
  
Above Harold’s tie, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He clears his throat. “In that case, Mr. Reese, may I suggest we move to the bedroom?”  
  
They stumble, still entwined, through the bedroom door. Under the faint glow of a skylight, John makes out a queen-sized bed tucked under the sloping ceiling and a double-wide mahogany wardrobe; but most of his attention is concentrated on peeling Harold out of his layers of clothing. The tie goes first; then the tweedy jacket is draped over a chair and the silk vest follows. He undoes shirt buttons without taking his mouth off Harold’s skin—now that he’s discovered Harold’s neck, he doesn’t want to give it up. Each tendon and hollow is a new source of pleasure, which he can feel surging from Harold’s body into his.  
  
He pauses just long enough to pull his own bloody shirt off over his head and toss it on the floor. His wounds are only pink divots now. Easing Harold onto the bed, he pushes open his shirt and sucks at the dip between his collarbones. This elicits a choked “ _oh!_ ” and a wave of lemony arousal. Harold’s lovely, clever hands are carding through his hair and grasping at the nape of his neck, while his breath gets choppier. “ _John_ ,” he gasps, voice cracking.  
  
He pushes up Harold’s undershirt, revealing a soft chest dusted with reddish-grey hair and two pale pink nipples. He kisses one and feels it stiffen against his lips. He licks it wetly and takes it into his mouth. Harold goes rigid and swears, and John feels a jolt of magic arc between them. “Wow,” he says, grinning up at him.  
  
Harold’s cheeks turn an even deeper red and his eyes dip behind his glasses. “I’ve always been rather sensitive there.”  
  
Humming delightedly, John bends himself to his task, sucking and nibbling at both nipples in turn until they’re stridently peaked and red as berries. Arousal—and feebly suppressed noises—fairly gushes out of Harold. John’s skin sings with it.  
  
He kisses his way down Harold’s white belly. By the time he gets to his belt buckle, his pulse is pounding with anticipation. He can feel the rigid heat of Harold’s hard-on beneath the wool of his trousers and he can’t wait to get it in his mouth. He quickly unzips his fly and tugs down the waistband of his boxers.  
  
If any cock can be called elegant, he thinks, then it’s Harold’s: perfectly shaped, modestly sized, beautifully flushed, and shining-wet at the tip. He takes the whole thing down at once, burying his nose in tickling hairs. Above him Harold keens in surprise and pleasure. Waves of it wash over him, and he can feel how very close Harold is. He pulls off slowly, then plunges down again, sucking hard, and is rewarded with a helpless, guttural cry and Harold’s cock pulsing come down his throat. At the same time, the almost unbearable sweetness of Harold’s orgasm sweeps through John from scalp to toes, sparks of magic ricocheting across his nerves. He groans around his cock, which throws them into another feedback loop of pleasure.  
  
At last he flops onto his back, panting.  
  
“My goodness,” breathes Harold, glassy-eyed. It’s such a Harold response, John wants to laugh. Instead he stares up at the skylight, at the clouds lit up festively from below by the city’s light pollution.  
  
Harold pulls his undershirt down from around his armpits and tucks himself away. He looks over at John, lying there in just his pants, and says, “Oh! Forgive me.” John’s hard-on, though subsiding, is still obvious under his fly.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says, as Harold reaches for his belt. “You don’t have to.”  
  
Harold arches his eyebrows. “I know I don’t _have_ to—”  
  
“No, I mean… For my kind, feeding is pretty much the main event.”  
  
Harold's hand drops to the covers between them and he tilts his head. “Are you saying you don’t want me to, or…?”  
  
“No, but it’s, uh, icing on the cake, I guess. Strictly optional.”  
  
“Well, _I_ want to.” Harold takes firm hold of him through the fabric of his pants. John bites his lip as his erection returns with a vengeance. Harold nimbly undoes his buckle and zipper, and then his smooth hand is on John’s cock, spreading precome down his length so it’s slick and slippery. “How do you like it?” he asks, closing his grip and starting a rhythm.  
  
“Uh, that’s good. A little tighter— _ah!_ —and not quite so fast. Yeah, like that. Just like that. Fuck.” Harold’s obviously enjoying himself: John can feel little wisps of his arousal slipping inside him. How can one small man contain so much power? John’s so full of energy he thinks his skin should be stretched like a water balloon, but it seems his body can always take a little more. “ _God_ ,” he groans as Harold’s hand quickens its rhythm, twisting precisely _so_ under the head and repeating the move when John hisses _yes_. His hips jerk twice, and he comes in long streaks up his abdomen and chest.  
  
When he opens his eyes, Harold has retrieved the handkerchief from his jacket and is shaking out its sharply ironed creases.  
  
“Such a gentleman,” he says, as Harold carefully wipes his chest and belly.  
  
Harold snorts and keeps wiping. “It seems the least I could do.”  
  
“ _You_ fed _me_ , remember?”  
  
When he’s reasonably clean, John slides out of his pants and underwear, while Harold undresses and puts his glasses on the bedside table. In his undershirt and boxers, he climbs under the covers and settles on his side with his back to John, folding two pillows in half to support his neck. He reaches back blindly for John’s wrist and pulls his arm over him like a blanket. “There,” he says, and promptly falls asleep.  
  
For a while John lies there spooning in a contented post-coital fog, listening to the faint whistle of Harold’s breaths and inhaling the scent of his skin. But his brain keeps reminding him this might be his only chance, so with a quiet sigh he slips out of bed to recon the rest of Finch’s apartment.  
  
He visits the bathroom first, all sea-green tile with a standing shower and a deep claw-foot tub. The only mirror is a small round shaving mirror sitting on a wooden cabinet. When he comes out, Harold is still asleep.  
  
The main room opens onto a small but well-equipped kitchen, the gleam of the brushed-steel appliances just visible in the glow of a microwave clock. John returns to the living room and frowns at its old-fashioned, Oxford-don vibe. It’s too low-tech. Where are all the computers?  
  
As he suspected, there’s another door, tucked into a corner, that opens onto an Aladdin’s cave of electronics. In the middle, under the pale light pouring through the skylights, sits a wide worktable covered in bits and pieces of computer innards. Boards, wires, and circuits lie in an indistinguishable clutter. Against the wall, shelves hold the hulking shells of old computers, some of them practically antiques. There are stacks of old drives, boxes of neatly sorted cables, and a wide array of tools, from pliers to soldering irons. The whole room reeks of magic.  
  
Harold hasn’t moved when he slides back into bed and settles quietly behind him.  
  
“Find anything interesting?”  
  
John’s heart thumps. Casually, he says, “Nothing I didn’t expect.”  
  
Harold rolls to face him. His eyes look large and defenceless without his glasses. “I’ve been thinking. If you were shot, now, you would recover immediately, is that right?”  
  
“And here I thought we had a good time,” he says, aiming for lighthearted.  
  
“I’m serious.” Harold places his palm on John’s bare chest, thumb stroking through his chest hair.  
  
“Sure. I mean, it’d take me a few minutes to recover, but I’d walk away.” Hell, he was so juiced right now, he could probably jump off the Empire State Building and bounce like a rubber ball.  
  
“Then…” Harold’s gaze darts to the side. “Then clearly, the most efficient course of action would be for me to feed you on a regular basis. However often it takes to keep you impervious to harm. For the sake of the mission.”  
  
“Makes sense,” says John, keeping a straight face.  
  
Harold lets out a breath. “Good. That’s decided.” He rolls over and closes his eyes.  
  
Behind him, John does a mental fist-pump of victory. He’s finally got Finch where he wants him. Soon the wizard won’t be able to do without him, and the balance of power between them will shift, contract or no contract.  
  
He falls asleep breathing in the scent of Harold’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, ever since comparing Harold's apartment to Mr. Tumnus's cave, I can't stop picturing Faun!Harold with an umbrella and a scarf and his little tummy showing. Also with tidy little horns. I am weird.


	7. Chapter 7

They settle, businesslike, on four times a week. John could easily get by on less, given the wizard’s potency, but Finch wants to be sure John can heal anything short of eating a grenade.  
  
“If I’m not able to…keep up with the schedule,” Finch says, “I trust you can find another willing partner without too much difficulty.”  
  
“You won’t have any trouble,” says John with a smile.  
  
“Mr. Reese,” he says tartly, “I am not as young as I once was. And there are certain inevitabilites of age—”  
  
Leaning forward, John trails his fingertip against the front of Finch’s fly, nudging magic into his suddenly stiffening cock. “One of the benefits of being an incubus.”  
  
“Oh.” Red-faced, Finch straightens his glasses and looks away. “We have a great deal of work to do today, Mr. Reese.”  
  
No matter how John teases him, Finch seems loath to deviate from their schedule. Over the next two days, John leaves his top buttons open and drapes himself across the library furniture like a cat. When that doesn’t work—beyond Finch’s palpable arousal—he tries changing his shirt in plain view. Finch watches him, transfixed, for a full minute before shutting his mouth with a snap and turning back to his computer. “That’s hardly necessary, Mr. Reese,” he says waspishly, his cheeks splotched with red.  
   
That evening, after they finally wrap up their latest number, Finch says, “Well, I suppose we’d better have sex tonight. I’d suggest my place as the most secure location.” In spite of his clinical tone, anticipation is rolling off him in waves.  
  
“If you like,” says John blandly, resisting the urge to laugh.  
  
Finch doesn’t touch him until they’re in his apartment, where he kisses John almost tentatively. The kiss soon turns deeper and more urgent, with slick, wet noises—that are interrupted by Bear’s whine. Finch pulls away with a groan. “Yes, of course I’ll feed you, Bear. Just a moment.”  
  
After overcoats and scarves are hung up and Bear is fed and watered, Finch leads John to the bedroom and pushes him gently back onto the bed. He kisses him again, less urgently this time, as he undoes his shirt buttons. John reaches for Finch’s belt buckle, but Finch stills his hand, saying, “Not yet.”  
  
“You know that’s kind of the point, right?” says John, but he lies back anyway.  
  
“I want to learn what you like.” He kisses his way down John’s chest, light and teasing. His hands make quick work of belt buckle and zipper, and then John’s lifting his hips so Harold can slide off his pants and boxers. His shirt is tossed on the floor and his socks pulled off, and then he’s lying naked on the bed. Harold stands to take off his vest and tie, looking down on him with a possessive hunger that makes the blood pound in John’s chest and in his dick. He stretches against the bed, raising his arms and arching his back, and watches as Harold’s eyes darken and his tongue darts between his lips. Wanton demon is a role he’s played many times, and he knows he’s good at it. Hell, he even likes it. Every whiff of Finch’s lust is evidence of his own power.  
  
After he's stripped down to his undershirt and boxers, Harold climbs awkwardly onto the bed and kisses him on the mouth, then the jaw, then the ear. He kisses the inside of his elbow and the hollow of his throat. John hums, basking in Harold’s pleasure as he makes his way across his surfaces like he wants to explore every millimetre. His lips are soft, his tongue wet, and his hands are warm and dexterous, sliding, cupping, kneading. John sinks into the sensations of his body and the low tingle of Harold’s enjoyment.  
  
Until Harold straightens with a wince. “Forgive me, John, this position is not ideal.”  
  
He sits up at once. “Whatever you need, Harold. Do you want me to—”  
  
“Stand here, next to the bed.” John’s body obeys without a second thought. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Harold pulls him forward by the hips. “There,” he says, and licks up the underside of his cock.  
  
John lets out a startled groan, and Harold’s arousal spikes at the sound. He wraps his hand around the shaft and takes the head into his mouth, while John clutches his shoulders. He’s clearly new at this—he can’t take much beyond the head, and the motions of his hand don’t quite match the rhythm of his mouth—but he’s giving it his all, sucking firmly and swiping with his tongue. It teases against John’s slit, then slides down to press under the head. Every time John gasps or moans, another surge of Harold’s lust goes shooting into him, so he lets himself be as loud as he can.  
  
Harold pulls off to catch his breath and to take off his glasses, which have completely fogged over. His eyes are huge and dark, his face blotchy red, his mouth completely wet, and his hair is sticking up at insane angles from whatever the hell John’s hands have been doing to it. He’s about to offer to switch positions, but then Harold goes back to work with the same single-minded determination he shows with his computers. He’s more coordinated this time, his strokes in synch with his hollowing cheeks. His free hand slips around John’s sack and fondles his balls gently.  
  
“ _Fuck!_ Harold...”  
  
Harold doesn’t quite pull off in time, and come splatters across his lips and chin, running down his neck to pool in the dip between his clavicles. John practically comes again at the sight. He made Finch _messy_.  
  
Harold just licks his bright, swollen lips and cocks an eyebrow at him.  
  
“Fuck,” says John again. He surges forward into a sloppy kiss, too high on the taste of Harold’s power for any sort of finesse. He licks the come off his face and throat, tugging down the neck of his undershirt, where the grey-gold hairs just peek out, so he can lick there too.  
  
“John,” murmurs Harold, his fingers trailing through the hairs on the nape of his neck. He sucks in a breath when John drops to his knees and begins nosing at the front of his boxers.  
  
John sucks him off ruthlessly, and soon he’s coming with a hoarse cry. His climax shoots through John like a rocket, leaving him trembling on his knees with his cheek pillowed on Harold’s white thigh.  
  
Harold flops back onto the bed with a deep, satisfied sigh. “I do believe you’ve made my toes go numb, Mr. Reese,” he mumbles with less-than-perfect diction.  
  
John grins, his eyes still closed. “What, these?” His fingers find Harold’s toes and stroke them, and Harold—Harold _giggles_.  
  
“You’re ticklish!” John jumps onto the bed, caging him between his thighs, fingers prodding. Harold’s too weak to do more than curl up his legs defensively and protest “No, no, no, no!” in between giggles.  
  
“I do not _giggle_ , Mr. Reese,” says John in his best Finch voice, and Harold groans and pushes his face away with a hand, saying, “The medieval Catholic church was right. You are the devil.”  
  
“I was wondering how long it would take you to catch on.” He rolls to one side and leans on his elbow so he can watch Harold.  
  
“You can have my soul if you help me under the covers and hand me some pillows.”  
  
“You’re way too easy.”  

***

“I hope you know anal sex is an option as well,” says Finch one day in the library.  
  
John’s still on his knees on the linoleum, having just finished sucking Harold off in his chair, and Bear has finally stopped complaining from his exile on the other side of the door. The whole time John’s mouth was on him, Harold kept stroking his head, running gentle fingers through his hair and murmuring “so good” in a wondering way that made his toes curl.  
  
When John finally fell back, both of them fuzzy-headed from Harold’s orgasm, Harold gasped, “Your turn.”  
  
“Harold…” John protested, shaking his head. The other man was clearly in no shape for more, at least not yet, and John’s feeding had left him deliciously replete.  
  
“Mr. Reese,” ordered Finch, “stroke yourself off.”  
  
John’s hand was down his pants before he was even aware of what he was doing. His summoner’s command had highjacked his nervous system as if their contract really had included an obedience clause. John knew he could refuse, in theory. He just really, really didn’t want to.  
  
A little crooked smile was on Finch’s face—the one that said he’d been right but he was too classy to gloat about it. “You like taking orders,” he said.  
  
“You like giving orders,” countered John. He could taste how much Finch was enjoying this, in spite of just having come minutes before.  
  
“I like giving _you_ orders,” said Finch, with a fond intensity that made John’s stomach flip. “You always carry them out so swiftly and efficiently. And gracefully. To have that kind of power over someone like you… It’s intoxicating.”  
  
John’s hips jerked and he came all over his pants.  
  
Now he gets up to let Bear in and grab a clean pair of pants from the spare room. He puts them on in front of Finch, as revenge. Finch watches him with sardonic eyebrows and an appreciative smirk.  
  
“About what you said…” John pulls up his zipper. “I’m getting what I need out of the sex we’re having.” More than he needs, but Finch doesn’t need to know that. “But I’m happy to try anything you want.”  
  
“It’s just that I don’t want my lack of experience or physical limitations to curtail your usual range of activities,” says Finch, frowning.  
  
John opens his mouth. Finch’s power is beyond his wildest dreams. “It’s fine, Finch.” The other man is still frowning. “Look, if you’re happy, I’m happy. Literally. That’s how it works.”  
  
“Yes, I’m aware of that, but…”  
  
“If you want to, we’ll try it next time, okay?”  
  
Satisfied, Finch returns to work on their latest number, a woman named Jianmei Phelps who has the misfortune to be married to an abusive cop. They extract Jianmei and her son, and set them up in one of Finch’s safe houses. Carter arrests the cop, but John doubts he’ll end up doing time. “Before you do anything rash,” Finch tells him, “I have two new identities and a job set up in Seattle in case Mr. Phelps isn’t charged.” That doesn’t stop John from taking Bear to Phelps’s house and scaring the shit out of him (literally), to discourage any thoughts of trying to track down his wife and son. Finch purses his lips but doesn’t rebuke him.  
  
The next time John is at Finch’s apartment for another “session” (Finch’s word), there’s an enormous bottle of top-quality lube sitting prominently on the bedside table. John raises his eyebrows.  
  
“My research indicated adequate lubrication is crucial,” says Finch huffily.  
  
“Sure,” agrees John, hiding a smile.  
  
But no amount of lube can make Harold enjoy the feeling of a finger in his ass. “I’m sure if you keep trying,” he pants, but John’s having none of it. “I _know_ this isn’t working for you. I can feel it.”  
  
Harold slumps against the bedcover with a sigh. “I did _want_ to like it.”  
  
John settles instead for eating him out at length, gently licking and sucking on his puckered ring until it relaxes. Harold goes nearly boneless and makes a variety of soft, surprised noises. When he finally comes, it’s with a gasp and a long shudder. John follows quickly, using his hand. He’s found that coming while he’s still riding the high of Harold’s climax makes his head swim in the best way. Flopping down next to him, he says lazily, “You could always fuck me, you know.”  
  
Harold’s eyes, which have drifted closed, pop open. “Would you…like that?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, burrowing under the blankets next to Harold’s warmth. “Yeah, I would.”  
  
This time they don’t wait two days. They’re in the library, having spent all morning gathering info on their latest number, Roberta Duleep, the head of a small accounting firm. John comes back from his uninformative surveillance to find Finch standing, arms folded, staring at a wooden table covered in files.

“What’re you looking at, Finch?”  
  
Harold starts visibly and his cheeks turn pink. “Ah, I didn’t hear you come it.”  
  
“Obviously,” says John with a smirk. “And you didn’t answer my question.”  
  
“Well, to be quite honest, Mr. Reese,” he says, raising his chin and looking John in the eye, “I was wondering if this table is sturdy enough for me to bend you over and fuck you on it.”  
  
John nearly swallows his tongue.  
  
Minutes later, after Bear has been sent off chasing a ball downstairs, John is naked and bent forward over the hastily cleared table. His hands are clamped on the table’s edge and his cock—already hard—is pressing against the cool, smooth wood. Behind him Finch is breathing heavily. “Are you certain you’re ready? Surely more preparation—”  
  
“I’m an incubus, Harold. Trust me, I can take it. Fuck me. Please?”  
  
Harold’s cock nudges at his entrance and then he’s pushing in with a soft groan. John opens up for him, letting his muscles relax, enjoying the press, the inevitable rudeness of the intrusion.  
  
Harold strokes his back, breathes. “Okay?” he asks.  
  
“Mm,” he agrees, too blissed out to form a sentence. He’s done this before, more times than he can count, but knowing it’s Harold, feeling the electric buzz of his power from his balls to the soles of his feet and at the same time Harold’s gentle hands tight on his hips… He rocks back, whispering, “Don’t stop don’t stop,” and Harold sinks in deeper with a choked noise. Finally, Harold pushes, bracing his weight on his good leg, and sinks slowly up to the hilt. He bottoms out with a groan, and John shivers, feeling Harold’s hips pressed against his ass and Harold’s desire skittering across his skin. With Harold inside him like this, he’s enveloped by honey-ginger and lemon; it’s all he can smell, all he can taste.  
  
He rocks back, suggesting a rhythm, which Harold quickly picks up. John adjusts his stance a little and cants his hips, searching for the angle that’s perfect for them both. “Yes,” says Harold, stroking his back. “Show me how you like it.”  
  
John’s hips snap back and at the same time Harold’s cock hits him just right and he cries out. They repeat the motion exactly, again and again, and John all but sobs. Harold is murmuring a steady stream of encouragement: “That’s it, yes. So good, so beautiful. My God, John, you’re exquisite. Ah! John. John. _John_.”  
  
Knowing Harold’s range of motion is limited, he keeps working his hips, hands digging into the wood as he takes his cock as deep as he can. Drops of sweat spatter the  table’s surface, and the legs squeak rhythmically over the noise of slapping flesh. They’re both panting loudly. “John,” Harold gasps, “I can’t—any longer. I need to—”  
  
“Yes, God yes, come in me!” he begs, as Harold’s thrusts become frantic. He can feel power building up like static electricity before a storm, and his muscles are trembling with the need for it to break. For a second they’re both teetering there, and then Harold’s orgasm hits them both. He thrusts forcefully, once, twice, and John tightens around him, shouting. Harold’s magic is pushing at his skin from the inside, filling him with fire, with shards of ice; he doesn’t know which way is up and his skin is bursting, and he falls to the table in a puddle of his own come as his arms give out completely.  
  
Harold slumps on top of him with an inarticulate mumble, and his glasses slide off and clatter on the table.  
  
They do, eventually, manage to get themselves sorted out, moving from the table to the couch on wobbly legs. Harold is half-dressed, the remains of his suit in shocking disarray, and John is still naked except for his socks, which he forgot to take off. _Bad incubus_ , he thinks fuzzily. Harold drapes his jacket over John as he curls into his side. It doesn’t do much for his modesty, but he appreciates the thought.  
  
That’s when Harold realizes their mistake. “Ms. Duleep!” One of his monitors is showing security footage of their number’s accounting office, where a man with an automatic rifle is striding through the front doors.


	8. Chapter 8

John is dressed and out the door in minutes, accompanied by Bear, who insists on coming with. Finch feeds John information in his ear as he weaves through mid-afternoon traffic on a “borrowed” motorbike, Bear draped across the seat in front of him (they draw more than a few looks). According to Finch, the man with the rifle is a former employee named James Logan, who was recently fired for sexual harassment. “I’ve alerted Detective Carter, and the police are on their way. Please don’t take any unnecessary risks, Mr. Reese.”  
  
The building’s security is laughable; he walks right in. On the third floor, the accountants have been herded to one side of the bull pen, crouching on their knees with their hands on their heads. “Where is he?” demands John. A grey-faced man wearing a tie with turtles on it lifts one hand from his head to point towards the offices. “Thanks,” says John.  
  
Logan is in the largest glass-walled office, his gun trained on Roberta Duleep, who’s standing behind her desk. “Please, James,” she says in a shaking voice. “Let them go.”  
  
John slips into the room and steps in front of the desk with his hands up. “What the hell!” says Logan, backing up. His gun swings between John and Bear, who’s planted himself at Roberta’s feet.  
  
“My name is John. You’re James, right?” He’s careful not to make any sudden moves. “I know you’re in a tough spot, James. You lost your job, the bank is taking your house…” —Finch chatters urgently in his ear— “…and you’re afraid you’ll lose visitation rights with your daughters.”  
  
“How do you—”  
  
“Things look dark right now,” he says softly, “but I promise it’ll get better. You don’t have to do this. You can stop now and walk away.”  
  
“No I can’t.” Logan’s skin is pale, his greying sideburns dark with sweat. He’s put on a good suit and tie for this—funeral clothes. “I’ll go to jail. It’s too late.” The gun’s muzzle rises and John lunges forward to grab the barrel. A spray of bullets punches a line of holes through the flimsy ceiling tiles.  
  
John jerks the gun by the barrel out of Logan’s grip and sweeps his legs out from under him. He gets him pinned under one knee and looks around. Roberta is crouched under her desk, shielded by Bear. No one’s hurt, not even John. Logan somehow managed to miss him completely.  
  
“John? John!”  
  
“We’re good, Finch. The number’s safe.”  
  
He cuffs Logan to the chair and leads Roberta out of the office. He can feel a tremor running through her arm, but Bear is leaning against her other side, probably siphoning off the worst of her fear. When they get to where the other employees are crouched, Bear jogs off happily to play trauma dog.  
  
Sirens wail outside. John glances through the plate-glass windows and sees black-and-whites pulling up to the building, lights flashing. Finch’s voice warns, “Detective Carter says they’re on their way in. It might be best if you left now, Mr. Reese.”  
  
He whistles for Bear, and they jog down the stairwell, briefly taking refuge in a supply closet while a SWAT team clomps by. After slipping out the service entrance, they circle around to the tangle of flashing cop cars out front. Carter is supervising in a kevlar vest, a walkie-talkie pressed to her mouth. She must feel him watching her, because she glances sharply in his direction. When she sees him, she makes that annoyed face she gets whenever she’s torn between thanking him and slapping him into a pair of handcuffs. John salutes her with a smile, then turns and leaves with Bear at his heels.  
  
“That was extremely reckless, Mr. Reese!” Finch grumbles in his ear as he and Bear press their way through the usual assortment of New York pedestrians.  
  
“It’s okay, Finch, I wasn’t really in danger. Even if he’d hit me, I’d’ve healed right away.” He would never have made a move like that without the immunity Finch’s feedings are giving him. Their “sessions” really are making him better at his job.  
  
“It wasn’t you I was worried about,” says Finch. “It was Bear. Need I remind you that _he’s_ not bullet proof? I’ll have to work on a protection spell…” His voice trails off in a clatter of keys.  
  
John’s stomach plummets and he suppresses the urge to kick something. _You’re jealous of a dog_ , he tells himself brutally. _Get it together, for fuck’s sake_. Bear looks up at him pityingly. “I don’t want to hear it,” John growls.  
  
Later that night, Finch shuts off his computer and rises stiffly from his chair. “I think that will do for today,” he says. The library’s papered-over windows have been dark for hours, and the remains of a take-out meal sit congealing on one of the tables. John sets aside his book ( _The Devil in the White City_ ) and collects Bear’s leash and a couple of plastic baggies, while Finch throws away the food cartons. They usually walk Bear together before parting for the night.  
  
The air outside is sharp and cold, turning the tips of Finch’s ears red under his hat brim. They both wait on the sidewalk while Bear circles a tree trunk, sniffing avidly. “Would you like to stay with me tonight?” asks Finch abruptly. His cheeks are red, but it could be the cold. “Not for sex, just for the company.” Behind his glasses, his eyes are on Bear, who’s finally decided to pee against the tree. Clearing his throat, he says, “I’m afraid I’ve been letting him sleep in the bed when you’re not there—a deplorable habit. Really,” he looks up, “you’d be doing us both a favour.”  
  
John’s mouth wants to split wide in a grin, but he reins it in to a twitch. “In that case, I guess I’d better.”  
  
In Finch’s apartment, they settle Bear in his dog bed and then climb into their own. Finch’s pyjamas are made out of some slippery fabric that slides like water against John’s bare chest and thighs. He wraps an arm around Harold’s waist and the smaller man sighs. “I didn’t realize how much I missed this. The closeness,” he says. John strokes his thumb against Harold’s belly, between two buttons, as he continues quietly, “For a while, I used to have someone… But I realized I was a danger to her, so I…broke it off. I almost forgot what it was like. Thank you for humouring me, John. It’s very kind of you.”  
  
“Kind?” His thumb stops.  
  
“I know I’m taking advantage. Of course you can say no, but when all’s said and done, I’m still your summoner. It’s not exactly fair, is it?”  
  
John’s stomach squirms. “Harold. It’s fine. You’re not—like that.”  
  
“Thank you for saying so.”  
  
He can tell Harold doesn’t believe him. “You’re not taking advantage of me. I’m not the victim here.” He rolls onto his back and stares up through the skylight. The clouds look like snow. “I’m not the person you think I am.”  
  
Harold turns with a rustle of sheets to look at him. The faint light makes his eyes seem luminous. “No?” he asks gently.  
  
“Harold, I use sex to manipulate people. It’s what I do. Am doing.”  
  
Harold doesn’t look shocked, or even surprised. “I think you underestimate yourself, John.”  
  
He wants to argue, but before he can speak, Harold adds, “I trust you.”  
  
He couldn’t be more stunned if Finch had slapped him in the face. He says nothing as Harold turns and snuggles back into him—just wraps his arms automatically around the smaller man. Harold is soon asleep, but he stays awake, staring blindly into the darkness.

***

On a sunny, clear day with frost crackling underfoot, John takes Bear for his afternoon walk. Harold’s not with them—he’s off pretending to be a bigwig named Crane at some high-priced arts fundraiser, part of maintaining his alias. Bear stops and scents the air, perking up his ears, and utters a sharp, low bark. John looks around the park but sees nothing unusual: joggers, dog-walkers, parents with strollers. The he spots Snow loping down the path towards them. The demon looks fuzzy around the edges—literally. He’s barely holding it together.  
  
“What do you want?” says John, keeping a wary distance. Beside him, Bear growls low in his chest, his hackles up.  
  
“John!” gasps Snow. “She’s here. Watch your back!” His form seems to waver and glitch, then it’s gone, and there’s nothing left of him but a few curls of smoke and the eggy stink of sulphur hanging in the air.  
  
John takes a circuitous route back to the library, doubling back on his trail several times, but there’s no way to know if it helps. He knows what he should do: Leave now. Cut all ties. Lead Kara as far away from Harold as possible.  
  
But he doesn’t. He stays sitting on the scratchy couch, running his hands over and over Bear’s soft ears while the hound licks at his fingers consolingly. New York is a big city. Maybe she won’t find them. Maybe Snow was just trying to rattle him—John doesn’t know for sure it was Kara who sent him back. It could have all been an act.  
  
He knows what Harold would do in his situation. Has done: he broke off contact with someone he— He sacrificed his personal needs to keep someone else out of danger. But Harold is a good man. And John is a demon.  
  
When Harold returns to the library, John waits for him to say something about Snow’s appearance. But he doesn’t mention it, doesn’t seem to have anything on his mind but the latest number. He must have been too busy with his Crane alias to be listening, and apparently he isn’t checking up on John with the same caution he used to. _I trust you._  
  
John says nothing about it, but he starts varying his routines more carefully than before, and he makes sure to leave Bear with Harold whenever he’s not around. Beyond that, he has to trust Harold’s native paranoia to keep him safe.  
  
Two weeks pass without incident, and he starts to hope Snow’s warning was all hot air. He’s in a Latin American bakery one morning, picking up some of Harold’s favourite alfajores, when an all-too-familar voice says, “How’s the tres leches?”  
  
Kara’s leaning against the counter next to him, looking sleek and glossy in a long black coat. She smiles, and John’s guts turn to ice. “What do you want?” he rasps.  
  
Her eyebrows arch in mock surprise. “What, no ‘happy to see you’?” She tucks her hand in his arm, her grip firm. “Come on, John. Walk me to my car.”  
  
A crazy part of him thinks maybe he can still make a break for it. But she knows him too well. “Don’t be difficult, _John_ ,” she says. Only she doesn’t say “John,” she says his real name. The tension leaves his body and he follows her docilely out of the shop. It’s just like he remembers: his mind screaming one thing, his body doing something else.  
  
She leads him down the sidewalk, past a newspaper stand whose plastic-wrapped bouquets are dusted with snow. Fine flakes settle on her dark hair. “Hm,” she says, looking up at the sky. “Beautiful, isn’t it? I do love New York this time of year.” She closes her eyes to let the snow fall on her pale lids and black eyelashes.  
  
Harold’s voice breaks into his ear: “Is everything all right, Mr. Reese?”  
  
He can’t get Harold involved in this, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want him to think he just up and left, either. “What do you want with me, Kara?” he says for Harold’s benefit.  
  
“Relax, John.” Her footsteps slow and she shoots him a sharp look. “Are you using a spell right now? I mean, you reek of his magic anyway, but…” She stops and frowns. "It’s a comm spell, isn’t it?” She whips a phone out of her coat pocket and jabs at the screen. John winces as his ear pops. Whatever she’s done, it’s taken out his connection to Harold.    
  
Kara smiles at what she sees on the screen, then slips the phone back into her pocket. “Seems like your boss is kind of controlling, isn’t he? But then, you always liked that.”  
  
He says nothing, keeping his face stony. At least Harold won’t be tempted to try and rescue him this time. John’s primary mission now is to steer Kara as far away from him as possible.  
  
“This is me,” she says, nodding at a rented grey Celica parked at the curb. “Get in.” She doesn’t enforce her order with his name this time. She doesn’t have to, because they both know she could.  
  
They leave the city and head upstate. The snow thickens, fat flakes pouring out of pale grey clouds, and drivers become cautious. Kara’s as unfazed by the driving conditions as she is by everything else. “So tell me about this boss of yours, Finch—or Crane, or Wren. The bird theme is cute, really.”    
  
“What about him?” John looks out the window and hopes she can’t hear his thumping heart.  
  
Her eyes narrow on the road ahead. “Don’t be stupid, John. You know I hate playing games.”  
  
“You love playing games,” he growls. “You just don’t like losing.”  
  
Her hands tighten on the steering wheel, and for a second he thinks she’s going to hit him, or worse, make him hit himself, but then she suddenly relaxes and laughs. “You must really like this one.”  
  
He shrugs, aiming for careless. “I’ve just managed to get him where I want him, that’s all. I don’t want you to screw up a good thing.”  
  
“Sure. Stop stalling and spill.”  
  
John grinds his teeth together. “He’s an idealist. Holds himself—and others—to high moral standards. Keeps people at arm’s length. Paranoid as hell.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Kara thoughtfully, “he’d have to be, to have stayed alive this long. Has he fucked you?”  
  
“Yes.” John keeps his gaze fixed on the window. They’re in the country now. The highway is lined with trees starting to thicken with snow.  
  
“Is he in love with you?”  
  
“No.” Harold is kind, Harold likes him, but…no.  
  
“Really? You’re slipping, John.”  
  
“You never fell in love with me,” he points out.  
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I thought I was for a little while, there. We had some fun, didn’t we?” She glances over at John, who says nothing. “You haven’t gone and told him your name, have you?”  
  
“Of course not. That’s a mistake you only make once.”  
  
“Poor John!” she laughs. “At least you learned a valuable lesson.”  
  
At the next exit sign, she turns off the highway and pulls into a two-pump gas station. The only person there is a lone clerk in a fluorescent-lit hut selling cigarettes, coffee, lottery tickets, and junk food. John glances at the dash; the tank is still three-quarters full. “Why are we stopping?”  
  
“Maybe I had a hankering for some Cheetos,” says Kara as she slides the gear shift into park. “Are you carrying? Never mind, I can see you are. Go take out that clerk, _John_.”  
  
John’s hand is on the door handle before the order even registers. His stomach lurches in horror. He can’t do this! But his body isn’t responding to his commands. He’s got one foot on the pavement when something seems to tighten around his body, like a net holding him in place. It’s the contract—it won’t let him kill an innocent person. Thank God!  
  
“Well that answers that question,” says Kara, as he sags back into his seat. “Your Finch packs quite a wallop, doesn’t he? I think it’s time you introduced us.”  
  
John closes his eyes tiredly. “Leave him out of it, Kara. You’ve got what you came for.”  
  
She laughs. “It’s sweet that you think I came here for you.” His eyes snap open. Kara’s watching him, smiling. “My boss is very interested in Mr. Finch’s activities. So you’re going to invite him to the old safe house near Minnewaska and we’re going to have a little chat.”  
  
She lifts her counterspell with a few taps on her phone and Harold’s voice flares to life in his ear. “John! Where are you? Are you hurt?”  
  
He tries to resist, he tries so hard. With an air of boredom, as if annoyed by his predictability, Kara repeats her command, using his name this time. He hears his own voice, low and blank, say to Harold, “You need to come and meet us.” He gives the address of the safe house, off Route 44. Then, because Kara didn’t tell him not to, he adds, “Don’t come! Stay away, Harold!”  
  
“Shut up, _John_!” she snaps, and his jaw clamps shut. “Mr. Finch, if you want to keep your pet demon in one piece, you’ll join us as soon as you can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun DUUUNN!


	9. Chapter 9

The safe house is a “getaway cottage” surrounded by birch and maple trees. John remembers using it with Kara when they were in the CIA. Presumably the Company’s not keeping tabs on it at the moment, though how Kara can be sure of that, he doesn’t know. She can’t still be working for them, not after they tried to terminate her—she’s too vindictive.  
  
The place is as bland as he remembers: beige wall-to-wall carpet, “country” style furniture, white ceramic pots holding some kind of dried grass. It looks like it was professionally staged for a realty company circa 1993 and hasn’t been updated since, which is probably the truth.  
  
It’s also cold, so clearly no one’s been here recently. After cranking up the thermostat, Kara points him to a checked sofa and walks through to the open kitchen. “Oh good,” she says over the noise of opening cupboards, “someone left coffee.”    
  
Shortly afterwards, she returns to the living room carrying a steaming mug. “So,” she says, sitting opposite him and crossing her black-stockinged legs in their tall boots. Above them she’s wearing a short black skirt and a thick, soft sweater the colour of blood. “Tell me about the computer.”  
  
“What computer?”  
  
Her face tightens. “The Computer, _John_. What do you know about it?”  
  
“Nothing,” his mouth says. “I don’t even know what it is.”  
  
Kara looks surprised for a moment, then she closes her eyes and laughs, shaking her head. “Oh, John! You never were very curious, were you? You never wondered where our intel was coming from. Still the same old John.” Her eyes flick up and down his torso, and he tastes her arousal: Easter lilies. He hasn’t been able to walk past a florist’s shop without gagging since he came back.

“We could have some fun,” she says, “for old time’s sake.” The mug clicks on the glass-topped coffee table, and the chair creaks as she stands. John keeps his eyes fixed on the window, through which he can see the balcony’s snow-capped railing and the bare branches of trees, black against the sky.  
  
“No tie,” she says, flicking his open collar with a finger. “Too bad. I always liked you in a tie.” She’s smiling now, mocking him. He swallows, remembering the first time she bespelled his tie into a shock collar. It was fun—at first.  
  
Tilting his chin up with a finger, she runs her thumb along his lips. “What do you think, John? Hm?”  
  
“Whatever you say.” He keeps his face neutral and lets his mind check out. She can make him do what she wants, but she can’t make him be present.  
  
She drops her hand, disappointed. “Oh, well. Your boss will be here soon, anyway.”  
  
John hopes she’s wrong, hopes Harold realizes how dangerous John is now that she can control him with a word. Did Harold hear her use his real name during the phone call? It would’ve sounded like “John” to him—a demon has to _give_ you their name, that’s how it works—but if there’s anyone who can put two and two together, it’s Harold. He repeats this to himself until he’s almost convinced Harold’s safe. So it hurts even more when he hears a crunch of gravel and spots the familiar grey BMW rolling up the drive.  
   
Harold brought Bear with him. The hound’s like an arrow on a string, ready to spring forward at a word, but he sticks close to Harold’s side as they step into the foyer.  
  
“Nice hellhound,” says Kara. “It’ll have to stay in the hall. Wouldn’t want to get paw prints on the furniture,” she adds with a fake smile.  
  
Harold nods and says _bly_ (stay) to Bear, who looks dubious but obeys. From where John’s sitting, Harold looks pale but determined. He wishes desperately he had some way to make him turn around and go back to his books and computers.  
  
“You don’t mind if I frisk you?” says Kara, holding up her phone.  
  
“Be my guest,” says Harold politely. It wasn’t really a question.  
  
Her phone trills a steady stream of alarms as it picks up the stain-resistance spell on his suit, the wrinkle-free spell on his shirt, the don’t-lose-me spell on his cufflinks and glasses, the shoe-shine spell, and even the spell that keeps his hair in its customary state of rigidity. “There is such a thing as relying too much on magic,” she says dryly.  
  
Harold shrugs. “What’s the point of having it if you don’t use it?”  
  
He follows her into the living room, where his worried eyes scan John’s face and body, looking for injuries. John shakes his head minutely to say _don’t worry about me_. Harold presses his lips together.  
  
Kara takes the place next to John on the gingham sofa and waves Harold into a country-blue chair. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet the elusive Mr. Finch. Tell me about your AI.”  
  
“It’s not _my_ AI,” he corrects her calmly. “It belongs to the government now.”  
  
“But you obviously have access, in order to run your little crusade with John, here. An interesting choice of demon, by the way. Do you have a thing for incubi?”  
  
“We rescue people,” says Harold, unflustered. “It’s important for them to trust us quickly.”  
  
“Yes, John is good at that, isn’t he? How much time did it take him to get your trust?”  
  
“Less than I expected.”  
  
Kara laughs. Then her face changes abruptly. “Tell me where you put the back door.”  
  
Harold raises his eyebrows, the picture of innocent surprise. “There isn’t one. My communication with the Machine is all one-way.”  
  
“Bullshit,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You’re too much of a control freak not to have left yourself a way to get back in.”  
  
The problem with Kara, John thinks, is that her selfishness makes it impossible for her to believe in altruism in others. He starts inching his hand, slowly, slowly, towards his gun, because he knows what’s coming next. If he can take her out before she can speak—  
  
“Stop that, _John_.”  
  
He freezes, mentally cursing her.  
  
“And don’t try giving Finch your name, either.”  
  
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.  
  
Turning to Harold, she says, “Tell me how to access the Machine or I’ll order John to shoot you.”  
  
Harold barely blinks. “We both know that’s an empty threat. John can’t kill me, by the terms of his contract.”  
  
“Using his name will override that.”  
  
“I think not,” he says cooly.  
  
Kara smiles and leans back on the sofa cushions. “Yes, that contract is surprisingly strong. It must have been a lot of work.”  
  
Arching a scornful eyebrow, Harold says, “We are at an impasse, Ms. Stanton. You may be able to force John to do what you like, but you can’t make him kill me. If you try to kill me yourself, he’ll be impelled to stop you by the terms of the contract. The same is true if you try to kill him. You have no leverage here.”  
  
“Wow, tough guy. I like it,” she says, and John’s stomach clenches. “But you know, I had John recite that contract to me word for word on the drive over here, and while he’s not allowed to kill an unarmed civilian, it doesn’t say anything about non-fatal injuries.”  
  
John has an urge to throw himself out the window—but no, that would leave Harold unprotected.  
  
In the same easy voice, Kara says, “Just tell me, Harold.”  
  
Harold’s face is pale, but his voice is quietly even. “There is no back door.”  
  
“All right,” says Kara. “ _John_ , shoot Finch in his good knee.”  
  
John’s hand is pulling out the gun even as his mind screams _No!_ At the same time, Bear leaps into the room between John and Harold. Harold shouts something in Afrikaans, but whatever he’s saying is drowned out by Kara’s command and the sound of the gunshot.  
  
Bear spasms in mid-air and falls to the floor with a whimper. His paws twitch on the beige carpet for a few seconds, then go still.  
  
John’s standing with his gun arm extended. He feels like he’s shaking, but his arm is stone-still. The others are on their feet as well. Harold says thickly, “There was no call for that.” His eyes turn to Kara, cold and murderous. “You’re a monster.”  
  
“Spare me.” She nods at John. “Carry on. Unless you have something to tell me, Harold? No? Then, _John_ , do as I told you.”  
  
His arm moves the gun so it’s pointing at Harold’s knee. He feels sick. He wants to weep. This is all wrong, all wrong.  
  
“John,” says Harold quietly. It’s not begging, it’s pity. Harold feels _sorry_ for him. John grinds his teeth as pain stabs him in the heart. His finger tightens on the trigger, and a second shot rings out.  
  
Kara Stanton falls to the floor with a hole between her eyes.  
  
Harold gapes at her. Then he gapes at John. “How?”  
  
John shakes his head, remembers the criss-crossing warmth of the contract tightening across his limbs. “It was the ‘unbearable pain’ clause,” he says, as the realization dawns on him. “She was causing me unbearable pain.”  
  
Harold staggers forward and wraps John in a tight embrace. John carefully puts the safety on before returning the hug, turning his face into the shorter man’s hair. Harold pulls back, glasses slightly askew. “Are you all right? Did she— Oh!” Half-turning, he calls out, “Bear, _up_!” and the hound lunges to his feet, tail wagging.  
  
Now it’s John’s turn to gape. As Bear dances around licking John’s hands, he remembers belatedly what Harold said in Afrikaans: _speel dood_ —play dead.  
  
“I added a few sequences to the spell in his collar to make it bullet-proof, after last time,” says Harold, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  
  
“You… You shouldn’t have come.”  
  
“Nonsense.” His hands caress John’s face and hair. “I had to come get you. And I was never really in any danger.”  
  
Suddenly John feels stupid. “You had a bullet-proof spell too.”  
  
“Of course. It’s in my cufflinks; the don’t-lose-me is just a cover. A rather good one, if I do say so myself.”  
  
John can’t think of anything to say, so he kisses Harold until they’re both breathless. When they separate, he says, “Harold, I want to give you my name.”  
  
“Oh, John. I can’t tell you how touched I am,” he says gently, “but please don’t. I don’t believe anyone should have that kind of power over another person.”  
  
“Right.” He swallows his disappointment, and Harold soothes him by petting his face until all he feels is foolishly grateful.  
  
He buries Kara’s body in a shallow grave close to the house, but he leaves the gory stains on the beige carpet as a little gift to the CIA. Harold takes care of erasing any surveillance. They hold hands on the drive back to the city, Bear lolling happily in the back seat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to say I added another chapter by popular demand, but the truth is I just can't count.


	10. Chapter 10

“I think we should void your contract.”  
  
John freezes with a forkful of scrambled eggs on the way to his mouth. They’re sitting at the apartment’s oak table, Harold in shirtsleeves and John in Harold’s too-small bathrobe. Lowering the fork, he says, “You want to send me back?”  
  
Harold’s eyes widen behind his glasses. “Oh, John, no!” He reaches forward and clasps his hand, and John relaxes slightly. “My intention is to replace it with something open-ended, so you can come and go as you please, with no magical restraints. Your actions will be entirely your own.”  
  
John’s stomach tightens at the thought. But Harold is smiling his full, beautiful smile and squeezing his hand, and he looks so happy. So he swallows and says, “All right.”  
  
“Good. Now, much as I’d love to linger here with you…”—his eyes slide down John’s neck to where his robe gapes open over his chest, until he visibly shakes himself—“we received a number while I was walking Bear this morning.”  
  
While Harold cleans up breakfast, John showers and dresses, wondering how early Harold got up and, more importantly, how he managed not to wake John. A silence spell, maybe? He hasn’t slept so late in years, but he doesn’t feel any of the groggy aftereffects of a sleep spell. Unless the warm, Harold-smelling blankets are a spell of their own.  
  
The number is yet another domestic violence case: a husband with a few drunk-and-disorderlies, a wife with a history of hospital visits. Two kids, three and five. John grinds his teeth.  
  
“Mrs. Fletcher has recently purchased a handgun,” says Harold grimly. “I’m afraid this is one of those cases where the number is both victim and perpetrator.”  
  
John parks outside the Fletcher house on a tree-lined street. Some of the neighbours have Christmas lights up already. He watches through his binoculars as Emma Fletcher makes her two kids a Sunday pancake breakfast in the kitchen. There’s syrup everywhere, and the younger kid keeps sticking blueberries up her nose.  
  
A second car pulls up in front of the garage, and at the sound, everyone in the kitchen looks up and goes still. Jim Fletcher climbs out of the driver’s seat and slams the car door. His clothing is rumpled like it’s been slept in.  
  
“The husband’s home,” says John. “Looks like he’s been out all night.” Inside, Emma is hurrying the kids out of the kitchen and up the stairs. “I don’t like it.”  
  
“Do what you need to do, John.”  
  
He can hear the shouting when he slips through the kitchen door. It’s the husband’s voice: something about not being interrogated and why doesn’t she trust him, segueing without pause into accusations about going to her sister’s last week and who was she really with because he’s not stupid, he knows what she’s up to, etc., etc. John can see them in the living room now, where she’s backed into a corner behind the Barcalounger. One hand’s behind her back. John can’t take the chance that she’s reaching for her gun. “Mr. Fletcher?” he says. The man whirls around, and John floors him with a single, satisfying blow to the jaw.  
  
Emma looks from her unconscious husband to John and back, the whites of her eyes showing.  
  
“I’m not going to hurt you,” says John, holding up his hands. “I’m here to help. So I’d appreciate it if you could put down the gun.”  
  
She starts slightly, then pulls a small Beretta out from under her cable-knit sweater. She clicks on the safety, but doesn’t put it down. “Who… Who the hell are you?”  
  
“I’m here to help. If you shoot your husband with that, you’ll end up in jail.”  
  
“If I don’t, I’ll end up dead.” She says it flatly, like it’s a simple fact.  
  
“We can help you leave him—”  
  
Her snort cuts him off. “Have you met my husband? He’s a relentless son of a bitch. He’ll come after us no matter where we go.”  
  
“Mommy?” It’s the five-year-old, calling down the staircase.  
  
“It’s okay, sweetie!” she calls up. “Mommy’s fine. Stay in your room and look after your sister.”  
  
“What about them?” John says, nodding upward. “You want them to grow up with their mom in prison?”  
  
She swallows hard, but her voice doesn’t change. “My sister will take care of them. At least I’ll know they’re safe.”  
  
Looking down at Mr. Fletcher lying unconscious on the floor, John thinks, _She’s right._ The simplest, most effective solution would be to kill him. An unknown intruder, unlicensed weapon, no fingerprints—he knows the drill. It would be so easy. He wouldn’t feel bad about it at all.  
  
Instead he pulls one of Carter’s cards out of his pocket. “Call the police. Press charges.”  
  
“Yeah, I tried that,” she says wearily. “They didn’t believe me.”  
  
He nods at the card. “She will.”  
  
“He’ll get out on bail,” she says, but her hand reaches for the card anyway. “He won’t care about a restraining order.”  
  
“In that case…” He’s got a pencil in his pocket—one of the stubby library ones. He uses it to write a cell phone number on the back of the card. “Call me. Anytime, day or night, doesn’t matter. Whenever he shows up, I’ll be there. I’ll take him out if I have to.”  
  
She stares up into his eyes intently, like she’s trying to read his brain. “Okay,” she says.  
  
“I’ll stay with you until the cops come, in case he wakes up. But it would be better for your case if they didn’t find you with a gun.”  
  
“Yeah…” She hesitates, then hands it over. “Thanks.”  
  
The cop car’s lights are flashing a counterpoint to the Christmas lights when he pulls away. He’s halfway back to the library when Carter calls him on the number he left with Emma. That didn’t take long.  
  
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing? I hope you don’t expect me to run interference for you. Break-and-enter, assault…”  
  
“Nice to hear you too, Carter.”    
  
She spends a few more minutes haranguing him, but there’s a sort of grudging respect underneath that he’s come to appreciate.  
  
“Merry Christmas, Carter,” he says just before she hangs up.  
  
“It’s November! What the hell is wrong with you?”  
  
Back at the library, Harold says, “That was very well done, John,” with an earnestness that makes him feel weak. In a second, they’re kissing, warm and wet and sweet. John drags Harold to the makeshift bedroom, where he lays him on the narrow bed and sucks him off slowly and languorously, until Harold’s begging him for _more, John, please_ , and the air is crackling with magical energy.  
  
Afterwards, sated, they lie together in a slightly awkward tangle of limbs. “This room needs a bigger bed,” grumps Harold. John hums agreement as he nuzzles at the gingery hairs on Harold’s chest; his feet are hanging off the bottom edge of the bed. He wants to sink into a contented doze, but his brain starts flicking through images of Emma Fletcher, the gun, Mr. Fletcher lying on the floor. Mr. Fletcher with a bullet hole in his forehead. “Harold?” he says quietly.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I’m not sure voiding my contract is a good idea.”  
  
Harold stirs under him. “What? Why not?”  
  
“I might not be…safe.”  
  
“I trust you,” says Harold, and his blank optimism makes John suddenly angry. He sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”  
  
“John?” His voice is cautious now.  
  
“I’ve killed a lot of people.” He stares down at his hands, hanging loose between his knees. “In cold blood. Just like that.”  
  
“Because it was in your contract,” says Harold gently.  
  
“Yes. It was in my contract.” He turns his head to look at Harold, lying half-propped on the pillows. Words are so unwieldy—he’s better at using his body. “With you, I can’t kill unless it’s justified. I’m safe.”  
  
“But—” Harold frowns. “Wouldn’t you rather have a free choice? Isn’t that what you want?”  
  
“Yes. No.” He rubs his eyes with one hand. “I don’t know how! What if I choose wrong? I’ve never done this before.”  
  
Harold blinks, sits up straighter. “You’ve never—”  
  
“I’ve always been under a contract on this side. Always! I mean, I’ve worked around them, found loopholes, that kind of thing—but ultimately it was never really up to me. The only thing I could control was how well or how badly I fulfilled my end. The responsibility—that was on my summoners. And now you want me to just—!”  
  
A warm hand lands lightly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, John.” Harold is sitting up now, a solid warmth at his back. “I suppose I was so determined to think of you as a person, I forgot you’re also a demon. That…was rather unfair of me.”  
  
John lets out a long, low sigh. “I’m not like you,” he admits. “I don’t have your sense of right and wrong.”  
  
“No one,” Harold says emphatically, “is born with a sense of ethics. It’s learned. By trial and error, usually. Do you think I’ve never made terrible, regrettable decisions? There are people I love who would still be alive if—if I had been a better person. I question my motives every day!”  
  
John turns to look straight into Harold’s face, into his wide blue eyes. “How do you know for sure that you’re doing the right thing?”  
  
“You don’t,” says Harold, stroking his back. “You just do your best, and try to learn from your mistakes.”  
  
He rests his head on Harold’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “I don’t know if I’m ready. Can we keep the contract going for a little longer?”  
  
Harold doesn’t answer right away, and John’s stomach sinks. “I’m not comfortable having that kind of control over you. I might get used to it, start thinking it’s normal, natural.” He pulls back to look John in the eyes. “Can you give me some time to work out an alternative? A day or two, a week at the most.”  
  
John nods. “Yeah, okay.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
His sincerity makes John’s stomach squirm. _He_ should be thanking Harold. “Sure,” he says.  
  
For the next few days, Harold stays ensconced in his apartment workroom when they’re not seeing to the numbers. John coaxes him to bed—repeatedly—but then wakes to find the other side of the bed empty (damn Harold’s sneaky silence spell) and the apartment thick with the smell of magic. John keeps him fed on takeout and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which Harold eats absently at his worktable, with a distracted “Thank you, John,” or an offhanded “Oh, I added your retinal scan to the security system, by the way” (never mind how he got it—John doesn’t want to know).  
  
After a routine number (a bank robbery gone sideways—John is already in place as a security guard and takes a discreet bullet to the leg, which heals almost immediately), Harold greets him at the apartment door with an aura of contained…anxiety? excitement? Dinner is sitting on the table—baked ziti from the Italian deli they like—and Bear is snoozing in his dog bed, tired out from a long walk.  
  
John makes it as far as sitting down at the table before he bursts out, “Just tell me! I hate surprises.”    
  
Harold sighs and rolls his eyes, but when he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out, his expression is almost shy. “I know you don’t like things around your neck, so…it’s a wristband.”  
  
John runs the butter-soft leather between his fingers, feeling the warm buzz of Harold’s spellwork.  
  
“The basic structure is rather simple, actually. It’s an obedience spell, keyed to my voice.”  
  
John’s stomach flutters. “Put it on,” he says, holding out his wrist. His voice is rougher than usual.  
  
Harold fusses with the fastenings, his cheeks gone pink. “It has some special features. Only you can activate it, with a keyword of your choice. And you can deactivate it at any time, with a second keyword, although I also made provision for a gesture—a series of taps—in case you are unable to speak for some reason.” His face is completely red now. “You can decide what provisions you’d like to keep from the contract, and I’ll repeat them as blanket commands. That way, we can amend them whenever you like.”  
  
“You can make me do whatever you say,” says John in a low rumble.  
  
“Only…” Harold swallows. “Only if you want me to.”  
  
“ _Yes_.” He drags Harold into his lap and meets his open mouth with his own. He squeezes Harold’s hair into spikes and feathers before the wizard persuades him to let go long enough to set the keywords.  
  
“Bedroom,” says Harold, once they’re done. It’s not an order, but John obeys quickly.  
  
Standing in the doorway, Harold licks his lips and says, “Undress for me, John.”  
  
John resists for a second, just to see what it feels like. The same net from the contract winds around his limbs; he can almost see fine golden lines criss-crossing his body. It’s not a force so much as an _urge_ : his arms _want_ to lift, his hands _want_ to unbutton his shirt. His muscles quiver with the need to carry out Harold’s orders.  
  
Harold watches him like a hawk. “Very good,” he murmurs once John is naked. The sound of his voice makes John shiver. “Lie on the bed. Yes, on your back. Now, put your hands on the headboard, like that, and don’t move.”  
  
John’s torso is stretched, his belly visibly rising and falling with each breath. He watches Harold, who’s in his line of sight (probably not by accident—no, not likely), as he casually slips out of his jacket and folds it across a chair. He takes his time, unhurried, barely even glancing at John as he undoes his cufflinks and toes off his shoes. For some reason, this makes John want to squirm—but he can’t, and the knowledge makes his dick swell. In seconds it’s launched itself up, swaying, until it bumps against his belly. Harold glances at it with an arched eyebrow and a flicker of amusement, and it responds with an excited dribble.  
  
Harold sits on the edge of the bed and runs the back of his hand lightly up John’s leg. “Is this what you wanted?”  
  
“Yes,” blurts John, eager to answer for a change. (It’s not him, it’s the spell. His face burns anyway.)  
  
Harold’s fingers slide feather-light up his calf to the inside of his knee. “Spread your legs for me.”  
  
His muscles jump with the urge to obey, and he’s soon wide open, cool air between his thighs. Fingers stroke up his inside leg and brush against his balls. He bites his lip when Harold presses lightly with his thumb. “Harder?”  
  
“Yeah. You can… _uh!_ …pull a bit.”  
  
He groans aloud as Harold massages his sack with his nimble fingers and gives it a few firm tugs. His stomach quivers in anticipation when Harold takes off his glasses. Then he’s leaning forward and his lips are on John’s exquisitely sensitive skin. He sucks one ball and then the other, his tongue pushing and stroking. At the same time, he slides his fingers down to the skin of John’s taint, rubbing firmly. He still hasn’t touched John’s cock, which twitches and drools on his belly.  
  
He has an impulse to run his hands through Harold’s hair, but he can’t—the spell has him trapped, pinned down like prey. He can’t bend his knees or flex his hips or sit up and flip Harold over. He can’t do anything but lie there and take whatever Harold dishes out, and the knowledge of it has his cock hard as iron and his head swimming with want. It’s crazy: all his life he’s been fighting this kind of control, and now here he is, completely at his summoner’s mercy, and it’s the best fucking thing he’s ever felt.  
  
Harold pulls his mouth off John’s balls with an obscene slurp, lifts his head, and says, “Don’t come until I say you can.”  
  
Oh, _fuck_. Now he needs to come even more than he did a second ago. His cock swells and his balls tighten, but it doesn’t matter: he can’t fall over that edge. A whimper crawls out of his chest.  
  
He doesn’t know how much time passes, but suddenly Harold’s hand is caressing his cheek, wiping away wetness—where the hell did that come from?—as he murmurs, “It’s all right, John. You’re being so very good for me. You can tell how much I’m enjoying it, can’t you?”  
  
Harold’s desire is so thick in the air, it’s making John’s skin prickle and his nipples ache. “Yes,” he whispers in a choked, wet voice.  
  
“Good,” says Harold. John closes his eyes under a wave of gratitude.  
  
His breath jumps when a warm mouth closes on the head of his cock. Harold uses his hand on the base of the shaft, the firm, steady strokes he knows John likes. His other hand slides down to caress John’s hole, fingers slippery with spit and precome. The rest of the world falls away and there’s only the hot, wet suction of Harold’s mouth and sliding tongue, the tight circle of his hand stripping John’s shaft, and the fingers pushing inside him to deftly stroke the spot that makes his eyes roll back. “Harold!” he gasps. “Harold, please, I can’t, I can’t, _fuck!_ ” He’s going to explode, lose his mind, he’s—  
  
Harold pulls off with a wet pop and says in a rough, low voice, “Now, John. Come for me now.” For a split second, he doesn’t think he can—he’s caught, frozen—and then it rushes upon him in exquisite relief. His cock pulses, spurting hot lines across his chest; his muscles flex and his toes curl. His head floats off into the clouds somewhere where everything feels good, and he’s in no hurry to come back down to earth.  
  
A sharp, joyful spurt of energy tells him Harold is following him, pushing him back up on another crest of pleasure. Jizz patters across his hip. Soon Harold eases himself down beside him. For a time, it’s just their harsh breaths in the quiet bedroom. Eventually, Harold sits up and fishes a handkerchief out of his vest pocket. He meets John’s eyes as he’s wiping him off, and smiles. “How was that?”  
  
“Good.” He clears his throat. “I liked it. A lot.” He reaches down to stroke the leather wristband, feeling the tingle of its spellwork in his fingertips.  
  
“You’d better deactivate that for now,” says Harold as he pulls a blanket over John and tucks himself in at his side, pushing a pair of pillows into the right configuration to support his neck. John frowns, wanting to disobey the implicit command…for which he’d have to deactivate the wristband. Grudgingly, he says the second keyword, and a faint sort of surface tension breaks across his skin.  
  
Harold’s arm settles over his chest, and he leans his forehead against John’s temple. “Tomorrow,” he says, dropping a pair of tiny kisses on the shell of his ear, “we’ll figure out what terms you want the spell to hold you to.”  
  
“I’d like to be able to do this again.”  
  
“Mm. Me too. Maybe if I wrote in a secondary mode…”  
  
“Tomorrow,” repeats John, kissing away the creases on his forehead. “If you start thinking now, you’ll get up in a second to go work on it, and I want you to stay here with me.”  
  
“Always, John,” murmurs Harold.  
  
John swallows a sudden lump in his throat and stares up at the skylight, stroking Harold’s arm with his thumb. He can feel Harold’s even breaths on his shoulder, like a benediction. “One computer error,” he whispers wonderingly.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
He should let Harold sleep—God knows he needs it—but he has to point out this one thing. “I never would’ve found you if it wasn’t for that miscalculation in your spell.”  
  
“What? Mm, no,” Harold says around a yawn. “I’m more and more certain that so-called error was the Machine’s work. It’s rather prone to playing matchmaker, I’m afraid. It must have introduced that little ‘miscalculation’ into my summoning spell to bring us together.” He nestles his head on John’s shoulder, eyes closing again. “No, I’m quite sure it was all deliberate. The Machine doesn’t make mistakes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, folks! Thanks for reading and for all your lovely encouraging comments. You all are the best.


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